crumble
part of speech
verb (crumble, crumbles, crumbled, crumbling); noun (a crumble, crumbles)
meaning for a pupil
1) To crumble is to break into small pieces. tree →
2) To crumble something is to break it into small pieces with your fingers. tree →
3) A crumble is a baked pudding of fruit covered with a crumbly mix of flour, butter and sugar. tree →
4) To crumble can mean to slowly fall apart or fail. tree →
sense in the lessons
In cooking lessons pupils rub flour and butter into crumbs to make an apple or rhubarb crumble. In science weathering makes rocks crumble over time; dry soil crumbles. In stories old castle walls crumble. Phrases: apple crumble, crumble into pieces, crumbling walls, that's the way the cookie crumbles (that's life).
examples
- The dry biscuit crumbled in my hand. tree →
- Crumble the cheese over the salad. tree →
- We made apple crumble with custard. tree →
- The old castle walls are crumbling. tree →
- Frost and rain make rocks crumble. tree →
- Crumble the bread for the ducks. tree →
- His sandcastle crumbled when the wave came. tree →
- 'Crumble those three loaves for the ants,' he said. tree →
note
Regular verb (crumbled). The noun «crumble» (pudding) is mainly British, Irish, Australian and New Zealand; in the USA a similar dish is called a «crisp» or «cobbler». Small pieces are «crumbs»; «crumbly» describes food that crumbles easily.
In the corpora
- Cliff edges can crumble without warning.
- Stay well back from cliff edges and behind any fence, because edges can crumble.
- Stay back from river banks, especially after rain, because they can be slippery or crumble.
- Dry sand crumbles, so she wets it, and it holds its shape.
- Stay well back from cliff edges and behind any fence, because edges can crumble and a fall can be deadly.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «crumble» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.