finch

«finch» in Mova's school dictionary: a small songbird with a short, strong, cone-shaped beak… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a finch, finches)

meaning for a pupil

A finch is a small songbird with a short, strong, cone-shaped beak for cracking seeds, such as a goldfinch, chaffinch or greenfinch. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons, Darwin's finches on the Galápagos Islands are a famous example of adaptation and evolution: different islands had finches with different beak shapes suited to different foods, which helped Charles Darwin develop his ideas. In gardens, finches come to bird feeders with seeds. Phrases: «Darwin's finches», «goldfinch», «chaffinch», «a charm of finches» (a group of goldfinches).

examples

• A goldfinch came to our bird feeder. tree →
• Finches crack seeds with their strong beaks. tree →
• Darwin studied the finches of the Galápagos Islands. tree →
• The chaffinch is one of the commonest birds in Britain. tree →
• Each kind of finch had a beak shaped for its food. tree →
• A group of goldfinches is called a charm. tree →
• But the field and wood sparrows, the larks and finches, blackbirds and green finches had picked up the millet long ago, and the girl could not find her way. tree →

note

Plural «finches» (add -es after ch). Capital F for the surname Finch (e.g. Atticus Finch in a famous novel). Trap: not every small brown bird is a finch; sparrows are a different family.

In the corpora

• Peter and Rosemary Grant watched the finches' beaks change within just a few years after a drought.
• In the 1970s Peter and Rosemary Grant measured finch beaks changing in just a few years after a drought.
• Peter and Rosemary Grant measured finch beaks on the Galapagos for about 40 years.

Trees and pragmatics

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