glider

«glider» in Mova's school dictionary: a light aircraft with long wings and no engine that flies… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a glider, gliders)

meaning for a pupil

1) A glider is a light aircraft with long wings and no engine that flies by riding on air currents. tree →

2) A glider is also any thing or animal that glides, like a paper glider or a sugar glider (a small flying possum). tree →

3) (UK) A glider is a garden swing seat that moves smoothly back and forth (also in the US, a glider chair). tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and design and technology lessons, pupils make paper or balsa gliders to test wing shapes, weight and air resistance (forces: lift, drag, gravity). Gliders are pulled into the air by a plane or a winch, then slowly come down while rising on warm air (thermals). In nature, sugar gliders, flying squirrels and colugos glide between trees. Phrases: «paper glider», «hang glider», «sugar glider», «launch a glider».

examples

• We made paper gliders and tested which flew furthest. tree →
• A glider has no engine. tree →
• The glider rose on warm air above the hills. tree →
• A sugar glider can glide from tree to tree. tree →
• The hang glider jumped off the cliff and floated over the beach. tree →
• Adding a paperclip to the nose made my glider fly better. tree →

note

Plural: «gliders». A glider still falls slowly overall; it rises only when the air under it rises. A «hang glider» is a different, simpler kind where the pilot hangs under a wing.

In the corpora

• Sugar gliders are tiny marsupials with skin flaps between their legs that can glide about fifty metres from tree to tree at night.

Trees and pragmatics

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