giraffe
part of speech
noun (a giraffe, giraffes or giraffe)
meaning for a pupil
A giraffe is a very tall African animal with a very long neck, long legs and a coat with brown patches. It is the tallest animal on land. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons on adaptation the giraffe's long neck helps it reach leaves high in trees; it has a long dark tongue. In stories and zoos it is a favourite animal. Phrases: «a tall giraffe», «a baby giraffe (a calf)», «a herd/tower of giraffes».
examples
- The giraffe ate leaves from the top of the tree. tree →
- A giraffe is the tallest animal on land. tree →
- Giraffes have very long, dark tongues. tree →
- Each giraffe has its own pattern of patches. tree →
- A baby giraffe is called a calf. tree →
- Giraffes sleep for only a short time each day. tree →
- A giraffe has seven bones in its neck, just like we do. tree →
- The things that were missed were nothing much at first--a few little elephants, a hippopotamus or two, and some giraffes, and things like that. tree →
note
Spelling: one «r», double «f»: g-i-r-a-f-f-e. Pronounced «juh-RAF». A group is a «tower» or «herd». Surprising fact: its neck has the same number of bones as a human's: seven.
In the corpora
- A giraffe's dark tongue is about 45 to 50 centimetres long and pulls leaves past the thorns of acacia trees.
- The male giraffe weevil has a neck several times longer than its body, and it is found only in Madagascar.
- Humans and giraffes both have seven neck vertebrae; a giraffe's are each very long, and almost all mammals have seven.
- Picture an animal so tall that a giraffe could almost walk under its belly.
- The true story already has a giraffe from Africa that the emperor's court mistook for a lucky magical beast.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «giraffe» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.