ladder

«ladder» in Mova's school dictionary: a piece of equipment for climbing up and down, with two… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a ladder, ladders); verb (ladder, ladders, laddered — UK, of tights)

meaning for a pupil

1) A ladder is a piece of equipment for climbing up and down, with two long side pieces joined by steps called rungs. tree →

2) A ladder is a series of levels you can move up, like a career ladder. tree →

3) In British English, a ladder is a line of broken threads in tights (in the USA, a «run»). tree →

sense in the lessons

In safety lessons: only use a ladder with an adult nearby, make sure it stands on flat, firm ground, keep three points of contact (two hands and a foot, or two feet and a hand), never lean too far to the side. Firefighters use long ladders to rescue people. In games, «Snakes and Ladders» (Chutes and Ladders in the USA) is a board game where ladders take you up. In maths, a ladder against a wall makes a right-angled triangle. Phrases: «climb a ladder», «go up the ladder», «step ladder», «rope ladder», «Snakes and Ladders».

examples

• Dad climbed the ladder to clean the gutters. tree →
• Hold the ladder steady for me. tree →
• The firefighter carried the child down the ladder. tree →
• I landed on a ladder in Snakes and Ladders. tree →
• The treehouse has a rope ladder. tree →
• Don't walk under a ladder; something might fall on you. tree →
• My tights have a ladder in them. tree →
• She worked her way up the ladder to become head teacher. tree →
• Are you standing on a ladder?" tree →

note

Plural ladders. Do not confuse with «latter» (the second of two) or «larder» (a cupboard for food). Walking under a ladder being unlucky is a superstition, but it can be unsafe because tools may fall.

In the corpora

• Left calm, it usually works out how to back down, like a person down a ladder.
• There is no single ladder of cleverness with humans at the top: each animal is clever in the ways its own life needs.
• Children climb a ladder only when a grown-up says yes and holds it, because ladders can slip and fall.
• Go up the ladder and down the slide, one at a time, so nobody crashes.
• In snakes and ladders, count from the next square, not the one you are on.

Trees and pragmatics

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