graceful

«graceful» in Mova's school dictionary: Moving in a smooth, light and beautiful way — 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

adjective (graceful, more graceful, most graceful)

meaning for a pupil

1) Moving in a smooth, light and beautiful way. tree →

2) Having a beautiful, elegant shape. tree →

3) Polite and kind, especially when things are difficult, as in «a graceful loser». tree →

sense in the lessons

Used for dancers, swans, cats, horses and buildings. In PE and dance it describes smooth movement. Sense 3 is about good manners: a «graceful» winner or loser is kind and fair. In stories swans and grebes glide gracefully on the river.

examples

• The ballet dancer was very graceful. tree →
• Swans are graceful birds on the water. tree →
• The cat made a graceful leap onto the wall. tree →
• She was graceful in defeat and shook hands with the winner. tree →
• The bridge has graceful curves. tree →
• The Water Rat rowed with graceful, easy strokes. tree →
• Deer are graceful runners. tree →
• It is the most graceful performance I have ever seen. tree →

note

Adjective; adverb gracefully, noun grace. Opposite: clumsy, awkward. Spelling: grace + ful (one l). Do not confuse with «gracious», which means kind and polite (more about manners than movement).

In the corpora

• A lovely hind and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; with her love be thou ravished always.

Trees and pragmatics

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