kilometre
part of speech
noun (kilometre, kilometres; US spelling kilometer)
meaning for a pupil
1) A kilometre is a unit for long distances. A kilometre is 1000 metres. It is written km. tree →
2) A kilometre takes about 12 to 15 minutes to walk. tree →
sense in the lessons
In school maths: a unit of distance for trips, roads and speeds (kilometres per hour, km/h); changing km to m (× 1000). In geography: distances between towns and countries on maps. In everyday life: road signs in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland show km; the USA and UK use miles. Phrases: «kilometres per hour», «a 5-kilometre run», «kilometres away».
examples
- The school is 2 kilometres away. tree →
- A car goes 60 kilometres an hour. tree →
- She walks 3 kilometres every day. tree →
- 1 kilometre = 1000 metres. tree →
- The speed limit near the school is 40 kilometres an hour. tree →
- We ran a 5-kilometre fun run for charity. tree →
- Half a kilometre is 500 metres. tree →
- The next town is 30 kilometres down the road. tree →
note
«Kilometre» (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland), «kilometer» (USA). «Kilo-» means 1000 (kilogram = 1000 grams). A mile is about 1.6 km. Maths: a unit: add km only to km; with «per hour» it makes a speed. Trap: mixing km and m without changing units.
In the corpora
- Tigers love water and swim well; Sundarbans tigers swim between islands in the mangroves of India and Bangladesh and can swim several kilometres.
- A galloping racehorse can reach about 70 kilometres an hour over a short distance.
- Donkeys bray to call other donkeys, and the sound can carry about 3 kilometres across their desert homeland.
- Gibbons are small apes that sing loud duets, male and female together, heard about a kilometre away.
- Swinging arm over arm is called brachiation; gibbons are the fastest apes in the trees, reported at around 50 kilometres per hour.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «kilometre» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.