grass
part of speech
noun (grass, grasses); verb (grass, grassed — rare)
meaning for a pupil
1) Grass is the green plants with thin leaves that cover lawns, parks and fields. tree →
2) A grass is one kind of this plant; wheat and bamboo are grasses too. tree →
3) To grass on someone is to tell on them (UK slang). tree →
sense in the lessons
a lawn to mow (area), or grass eaten by animals; heights of grass; in science: grass makes food from sunlight, cows and sheep eat grass, food chains start with grass; in everyday life: «keep off the grass», cutting the lawn; phrases: «the grass is always greener on the other side» (other things seem better than they are)
examples
- He mows the grass in 40 minutes. tree →
- The grass grows 2 cm a week. tree →
- The field of grass is 20 m by 10 m. tree →
- Cows eat the grass. tree →
- Please keep off the grass. tree →
- We sat on the grass and had a picnic. tree →
- Grass → rabbit → fox is a food chain. tree →
- The morning dew made the grass wet. tree →
- The grass is always greener on the other side. tree →
- All around grew nettles and tall grass. tree →
note
Usually a story word; growth per week is a rate. Lawn area = length × width (20 m × 10 m = 200 square metres). Uncountable for the lawn (some grass); «grasses» for kinds.
In the corpora
- Horse teeth keep growing out and wearing down on tough grass, so a vet can guess a horse's age from its teeth.
- A cow wraps its long rough tongue round grass because it has no top front teeth, only a hard pad.
- Scattering food in the grass makes gorillas walk and search, which is called foraging, and keeps them busy for longer.
- Wild rabbits mostly eat grass, clover and leafy plants; carrots are sugary and should be only a small treat for pet rabbits.
- Jackrabbits are hares; hares are bigger than rabbits, with longer ears and legs, and live above ground in nests in grass.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «grass» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.