length

«length» in Mova's school dictionary: how long something is from one end to the other — 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 (length, lengths)

meaning for a pupil

1) Length is how long something is from one end to the other. tree →

2) Length is how long something lasts in time: the length of the film. tree →

3) A length is the distance from one end of a swimming pool to the other. tree →

4) A length of something is a piece of it: a length of rope. tree →

5) «At length» means for a long time, or at last. tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths it is a measure of size in cm, m or km; one side of a rectangle, added, compared or multiplied by the width. Length × width gives the area; 2 × (length + width) gives the perimeter. In science we measure length with a ruler, a tape measure or a metre stick. In everyday life: the length of a film, a swim of ten lengths, «go to great lengths» (try very hard).

examples

• The length of the room is 6 m. tree →
• Find the length of the ribbon left. tree →
• The pool is 25 m in length. tree →
• Length × width gives the area. tree →
• Measure the length of your pencil with a ruler. tree →
• She swam ten lengths of the pool. tree →
• The length of the movie is two hours. tree →
• He cut a short length of string for the kite. tree →
• They went to great lengths to find the lost puppy. tree →
• At length his longing was satisfied. tree →

note

Note the spelling: «length» has a «g» and comes from «long» (like «strength» from «strong»). Countable. The verb is «lengthen» (make longer). Maths trap: the perimeter of a rectangle is 2 × (length + width), not length × width; check that all lengths are in the same unit before adding.

In the corpora

• A rest is a written silence with a length you count, so the music keeps moving in your head while you stay quiet.
• Toy Story, made by Pixar in 1995, was the first full-length film made entirely by computer animation.
• Jumping spiders leap many times their body length by pushing blood into their back legs, and tie on a silk safety line first.
• A tiny mite in California covers about 300 body lengths a second, more than any other animal measured.
• The Mole falls over backwards in delight and praises the Rat's clever step-by-step thinking at great length.

Trees and pragmatics

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