mainly
part of speech
adverb
meaning for a pupil
Mainly means mostly, more than anything else, or in most cases. tree →
sense in the lessons
In school writing and science it is used to describe the biggest part of something («Air is mainly nitrogen»; «The diet is mainly plants»). In maths and data handling it describes what most of the data shows. Similar words: «mostly», «largely», «chiefly». Phrases: «mainly because», «mainly made of».
examples
- The class is mainly girls this year. tree →
- Koalas eat mainly eucalyptus leaves. tree →
- The air we breathe is mainly nitrogen. tree →
- I walk to school, mainly because it is close. tree →
- Our garden is mainly grass. tree →
- The weather will be mainly dry with some showers. tree →
- The book is mainly about friendship. tree →
- The bar chart shows that pupils travel mainly by car. tree →
- The stories have mainly been adapted or translated by Mrs. Lang, a few by Miss Lang and Miss Blackley. tree →
note
Adverb, so it goes before the main verb or before the word it describes. «Mainly» does not mean «only»: in maths, if a class is mainly girls, more than half are girls, but some are boys. Do not confuse with «Maine» (a US state).
In the corpora
- Stars go on chat shows mainly to promote a new film, book or tour, and their funny stories are often practised beforehand.
- Plants grow mainly at the tips of their shoots and roots, and some bamboos can grow nearly a metre in a day.
- Chameleons change colour mostly to show their mood and to warm up or cool down, not mainly to match the background.
- Sawfish are critically endangered, mainly because their saws tangle in fishing nets.
- Sadly, more than a quarter of parrot kinds are threatened, mainly by forest loss and by people catching them as pets.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «mainly» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.