degree

«degree» in Mova's school dictionary: a unit for measuring how hot or cold something is — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (degree, degrees)

meaning for a pupil

1) A degree is a unit for measuring how hot or cold something is. Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius. tree →

2) A degree is a unit for measuring the size of an angle. A right angle is 90 degrees. tree →

3) A degree is what you get when you finish college or university. tree →

4) «To some degree» means a bit, partly. tree →

5) “By degrees” means gradually, little by little. tree →

sense in the lessons

maths: a unit of temperature (rises and falls) or of angles (right angle 90, straight line 180, full turn 360; a triangle's angles add up to 180); science: thermometers, Celsius and Fahrenheit, a fever; everyday life: weather reports; written ° as in 20°

examples

• It was 15 degrees in the morning and 22 degrees at noon. tree →
• The temperature fell 6 degrees. tree →
• A right angle is 90 degrees. tree →
• The angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees. tree →
• Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. tree →
• Turn 360 degrees to make a full turn. tree →
• It is 75 degrees Fahrenheit today. tree →
• My sister got a degree in science. tree →
• The natives came by degrees to be less fearful of danger from me. tree →

note

A unit: rises add, falls subtract; angle sums are fixed (triangle 180, straight line 180, full turn 360). Trap: temperatures below zero go negative. Celsius and Fahrenheit degrees are different: 0 °C = 32 °F.

In the corpora

• The coldest temperature ever measured at a weather station was about minus 89 degrees Celsius, at Vostok Station in Antarctica in 1983.
• The bombardier beetle mixes two chemicals in its body to make a spray of about 100 degrees that it shoots from its tail end.
• Mediterranean tortoises hibernate, and owners guided by a vet keep them steady at about 5 degrees so they neither wake early nor freeze.
• Vent water can be hotter than three hundred degrees, but it does not boil because of the huge pressure of the deep sea.
• Even a fertilised egg must be kept at about 37 to 38 degrees for 21 days to hatch.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «degree» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.