flowing

«flowing» in Mova's school dictionary: moving along smoothly, as water does in a river — 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 (flow, flows, flowed, flowing); adjective (flowing)

meaning for a pupil

1) Flowing means moving along smoothly, as water does in a river. tree →

2) Flowing can describe hair, clothes or lines that are long, smooth and loose. tree →

3) Flowing speech or writing goes on smoothly without stopping. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and geography, water is flowing in rivers from high ground to the sea; liquids flow but solids keep their shape. Electricity flowing in a circuit is called current. In safety, flowing water is stronger than it looks: never cross a flowing river or a flooded road, and stay out of storm drains. In writing, joined-up handwriting should be flowing. Phrases: free-flowing, flowing water, flowing hair.

examples

• The river is flowing towards the sea. tree →
• Water keeps flowing down the hill. tree →
• Flowing water in a flood can sweep a car away. tree →
• Her long flowing hair blew in the wind. tree →
• Electric current is flowing round the circuit. tree →
• Honey is flowing slowly off the spoon. tree →
• The princess wore a flowing gown. tree →
• His writing was neat and flowing. tree →
• Now in came the South Wind, with a turban and a flowing Bedouin cloak. tree →

note

Flow is regular: flowed, flowing. Do not confuse «flowed» with «flown» (from fly). Liquids and gases flow; this is how scientists tell them from solids. Fast-flowing water is dangerous even when shallow.

In the corpora

• An anaconda kills by squeezing until the prey's blood stops flowing, not by crushing bones.
• An amoeba moves by flowing its inside forward into a bulge called a false foot, and it swallows food by flowing around it.
• Ducks' feet stay just above freezing on ice because warm blood flowing in heats the cold blood coming back.
• Fewer waves break over a rip, because the water there is deeper and flowing out, so a rip looks calmer.
• The plates are always moving, very slowly, about as fast as your fingernails grow, carried on the slowly flowing mantle below.

Trees and pragmatics

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