hourglass

«hourglass» in Mova's school dictionary: A glass timer with two bulbs joined by a narrow neck… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (an hourglass, hourglasses)

meaning for a pupil

1) A glass timer with two bulbs joined by a narrow neck, where sand runs from the top to the bottom in a set time. tree →

2) A shape narrow in the middle and wide at top and bottom, as in «an hourglass figure». tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths and science it is a way to measure time: a one-minute or three-minute sand timer. Board games use small ones. In stories an hourglass shows time running out. Phrases: hourglass shape, sand timer.

examples

• Turn the hourglass over and start drawing. tree →
• When the sand runs out, your turn is over. tree →
• The wizard's hourglass was almost empty. tree →
• Our egg timer is a little three-minute hourglass. tree →
• A wasp has an hourglass shape. tree →
• Time ran out like sand in an hourglass. tree →

note

Countable. «an hourglass» because the h is silent. Despite the name, many hourglasses measure minutes, not a full hour — check the time on it in a maths problem. It is not very exact compared with a clock.

In the corpora

• Some atoms are radioactive and slowly change into other atoms at a steady rate, like sand falling through an hourglass.
• An hourglass is a timer you can watch: sand falls through a narrow neck.
• An hourglass times with sand falling through a narrow neck; hourglasses became common in Europe about 700 years ago.

Trees and pragmatics

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