millimetre

«millimetre» in Mova's school dictionary: a small unit of length; there are 10 millimetres in a… — 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 millimetre, millimetres); millimeter (US)

meaning for a pupil

A millimetre is a small unit of length; there are 10 millimetres in a centimetre and 1,000 in a metre. It is written mm. tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths and science pupils measure small lengths in millimetres with a ruler: the width of a fingernail, rainfall in a rain gauge. Converting units: mm to cm to m. Phrases: to the nearest millimetre, millimetres of rain.

examples

• A millimetre is about the thickness of a credit card. tree →
• Measure the line to the nearest millimetre. tree →
• 10 millimetres make 1 centimetre. tree →
• We had 25 millimetres of rain today. tree →
• The ant is 6 mm long. tree →
• 35 mm = 3.5 cm. tree →
• The gap was only a millimetre wide. tree →
• A metre has 1,000 millimetres. tree →

note

UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Ireland spell "millimetre"; USA spells "millimeter". Symbol mm (no s, no full stop). "Milli-" means one thousandth. Maths: mm ÷ 10 = cm; mm ÷ 1,000 = m; cm × 10 = mm. Trap: do not mix up mm with ml (millilitre, for volume).

In the corpora

• A metre is 100 centimetres, and a centimetre is 10 millimetres.
• Squeeze the whole Earth down to the size of a marble, about 9 millimetres across, and it would become a black hole.
• To become a black hole, Earth would have to be squeezed to about 9 millimetres across, about the size of a marble.
• A desert gets less than about 250 millimetres of rain a year.
• A desert gets less than about 250 millimetres of rain a year.

Trees and pragmatics

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