fell

«fell» in Mova's school dictionary: Dropped down or came down: I fell off my bike — 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

verb form (past of fall: fall, falls, fell, fallen, falling); verb (fell, fells, felled, felling); noun (a fell, fells — UK)

meaning for a pupil

1) (past of fall) Dropped down or came down: I fell off my bike. tree →

2) (verb) To cut down a tree, or knock someone down: They felled the old oak. tree →

3) (noun, UK) A hill or high moor in the north of England: the Lake District fells. tree →

4) (adjective, old or poetry) Cruel or terrible: «at one fell swoop» = all at once. tree →

sense in the lessons

In stories «fell» is often the past of «fall»: someone fell asleep, fell ill, prices fell; in maths «the temperature fell by 5 degrees» means it went down — subtract. Phrases: «fell asleep», «fell over», «fell in love», «fell ill», «at one fell swoop».

examples

• I fell over and hurt my knee. tree →
• The baby fell asleep in the car. tree →
• The temperature fell from 12 °C to 4 °C, a fall of 8 degrees. tree →
• Leaves fell from the trees in autumn. tree →
• The workers felled three tall trees. tree →
• We walked up the fell to see the lake. tree →
• She fell in love with the puppy. tree →
• This lasted for a while, and then they came upon the fells. tree →

note

Trap: «fell» is the past of «fall» (fall, fell, fallen), but «fell» is also its own verb «to cut down» with past «felled». Do not write «falled». In maths, «fell by» = decrease (subtract); «fell to» = the new value.

In the corpora

• An old Scandinavian folk story said lemmings fell from the sky in storms, because they appeared so suddenly in boom years.
• When researchers sprayed a harmless mist into single canopy trees, beetles of hundreds of kinds fell out, many never named.
• People once cut tunnels through giant sequoias for cars as a tourist trick, and one tunnel tree fell in a storm in 2017.
• In London sparrow numbers fell by about two-thirds in a few decades, and scientists still argue why.
• Jaguar «fell three times backward over his own painted tail».

Trees and pragmatics

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