miscarriage
part of speech
noun (a miscarriage, miscarriages)
meaning for a pupil
1) When a baby growing inside its mother dies and comes out too early, long before it could live on its own. tree →
2) (formal) A miscarriage of justice is when a court gets it wrong and punishes someone who did nothing wrong. tree →
3) (formal, old) A failure of a plan, or a letter or parcel going to the wrong place. tree →
sense in the lessons
A sad, gentle word used in families, health lessons and stories; people speak it softly and kindly. In history and news, «a miscarriage of justice» tells the reader an innocent person was wrongly blamed. Phrases: have a miscarriage, a miscarriage of justice.
examples
- Mum had a miscarriage before my little brother was born. tree →
- She was very sad after the miscarriage, so we made her a card. tree →
- Doctors said nobody was to blame for the miscarriage. tree →
- Locking up the wrong man was a miscarriage of justice. tree →
- The newspaper called the trial a terrible miscarriage of justice. tree →
- Talk about a miscarriage gently, because it hurts families. tree →
note
Countable noun: a miscarriage, two miscarriages. Verb form: miscarry (miscarried). Not the same as «carriage» (a coach or train car). A sensitive topic: speak kindly and do not joke about it. Not a maths word.
In the corpora
- A miscarriage is when a baby stops growing and dies early in pregnancy; it happens quite often and is nobody's fault.
- "Lost the baby" means had a miscarriage: the baby died before it could be born.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «miscarriage» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.