dilate
part of speech
verb (dilate, dilates, dilated, dilating)
meaning for a pupil
1) To become wider or bigger, especially an opening in the body. tree →
2) The pupils of your eyes dilate (get bigger) in the dark so more light can come in. tree →
3) (medicine) A doctor may use drops to dilate your pupils to look inside your eyes. tree →
4) (formal, rare) To talk or write at length about something. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons about the eye: pupils dilate in dim light and shrink in bright light; in health topics blood vessels dilate when you are hot; in maths «dilation» means making a shape bigger or smaller by a scale factor; phrases: «dilated pupils», «blood vessels dilate».
examples
- Your pupils dilate when you walk into a dark room. tree →
- The optician put drops in my eyes to dilate them. tree →
- When you are hot, blood vessels in your skin dilate. tree →
- Cat's eyes dilate into big black circles at night. tree →
- Watch a friend's eyes dilate when you turn off the light. tree →
- The nurse checked whether the patient's pupils were dilated. tree →
- The opposite of dilate is constrict. tree →
note
Regular verb: dilated, dilating. Noun: dilation (also dilatation). In maths, a dilation is an enlargement: a scale factor of 2 makes every length twice as long; a scale factor of 1/2 makes it half. Opposite: constrict or contract.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «dilate» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.