mass

«mass» in Mova's school dictionary: the amount of matter in an object, measured in grams and… — 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 (mass, a mass, masses); adjective (mass — many people); verb (mass, masses, massed, massing)

meaning for a pupil

1) Mass is the amount of matter in an object, measured in grams and kilograms. tree →

2) A mass is a large amount or lump of something without a clear shape. tree →

3) A mass of people or things is a large crowd or number. tree →

4) Masses of something (informal) means lots of it. tree →

5) Mass is the main service in the Catholic church. tree →

6) Mass (adjective) means involving very many people, like mass transport. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and maths, mass is measured with scales or a balance: 1 kilogram = 1000 grams. Mass stays the same everywhere, but weight (the pull of gravity) changes: on the Moon you weigh less but your mass is the same. In geography, a land mass is a large area of land. Phrases: mass of, masses of, land mass, the masses (ordinary people), go to Mass, mass production.

examples

• The mass of the apple is 150 grams. tree →
• Use the balance to find the mass of the stone. tree →
• A mass of clouds covered the sky. tree →
• There were masses of people at the concert. tree →
• Australia is a huge land mass. tree →
• Grandma goes to Mass on Sunday. tree →
• Factories make toys by mass production. tree →
• They could not pull their feet out of the sticky mass. tree →

note

In maths, mass units: grams (g), kilograms (kg), tonnes (t); 1 kg = 1000 g; 1 tonne = 1000 kg. Everyday people say "weight" when they mean mass; in science they differ (weight is a force, in newtons). Capital M for the church service.

In the corpora

• A glacier is a huge mass of ice that slowly flows downhill under its own weight.
• The biggest mass extinction, about 252 million years ago, wiped out about 90% of sea species.
• Everything that has mass pulls on everything else, and this pull is called gravity.
• Many studies report that Australia has had far fewer mass shootings since 1996, though people argue about whether other countries could copy it.
• Catholics celebrate Mass and have seven sacraments; the word catholic means universal.

Trees and pragmatics

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