dawn
part of speech
noun (dawn, dawns); verb (dawn, dawns, dawned, dawning)
meaning for a pupil
1) Dawn is the time in the early morning when light first appears in the sky, just before the sun rises. tree →
2) Dawn is the beginning of something: the dawn of time. tree →
3) To dawn means to begin to get light. tree →
4) «It dawned on me» means I suddenly understood or realised. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science: dawn and dusk come from the Earth spinning; at dawn the sky lightens because sunlight is scattered in the air before the sun is above the horizon. In nature, birds sing the «dawn chorus». In history, Anzac Day dawn services in Australia and New Zealand. In stories, dawn often marks a new start or the end of a dangerous night. Phrases: at dawn, from dawn till dusk, dawn chorus, at the crack of dawn, dawn broke, it dawned on me.
examples
- We got up at dawn to see the sunrise. tree →
- The birds' dawn chorus woke me up. tree →
- Farmers work from dawn till dusk. tree →
- It dawned on me that I had left my bag on the bus. tree →
- Dawn broke over the mountains. tree →
- We set off at the crack of dawn. tree →
- People gathered for the Anzac Day dawn service. tree →
note
Countable or uncountable: «at dawn» (no «the»). Opposite: dusk. Similar: daybreak, sunrise (sunrise is the moment the sun appears; dawn is the light before it). Dawn is also a girl's name.
In the corpora
- Cats sleep about twelve to sixteen hours a day and are most active at dawn and dusk, when their prey is too.
- The Mole squeezes his paw in the dark and offers to run home with him at dawn.
- The Rat heard the piper at dawn and the call of the South, and came back to his river.
- During Ramadan many Muslims do not eat or drink from dawn to sunset, and friends are kind about it.
- Example: during Ramadan a girl in Birmingham fasts from dawn to sunset.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «dawn» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.