mongoose
part of speech
noun (a mongoose, mongooses)
meaning for a pupil
A mongoose is a small, fast, furry animal with a long body and tail, from Africa and Asia, famous for fighting and killing snakes, including cobras. tree →
sense in the lessons
In stories, the most famous mongoose is Rikki-Tikki-Tavi from Rudyard Kipling's «The Jungle Book», who protects a family from cobras. In science lessons, mongooses are quick and have some resistance to snake venom. Meerkats are a kind of mongoose. When people brought mongooses to islands like Hawaii to kill rats, they also killed native birds — a lesson about invasive species. Phrases: «a band of mongooses».
examples
- The mongoose darted at the cobra and won the fight. tree →
- Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a brave mongoose in Kipling's story. tree →
- Meerkats belong to the mongoose family. tree →
- Mongooses brought to Hawaii ate the eggs of rare birds. tree →
- A mongoose is quick enough to dodge a snake's strike. tree →
- A group of mongooses is called a band. tree →
- Our mongoose is killing a snake.” And Rikki-tikki heard a scream from Teddy’s mother. tree →
note
Plural «mongooses» (not «mongeese»): the word has nothing to do with «goose»; it comes from an Indian language (Marathi «mungūs»).
In the corpora
- Meerkats are a kind of mongoose, not a kind of rat or squirrel.
- Banded mongooses pick ticks off warthogs lying down; a friendship where both sides gain is called mutualism.
- Hyenas look like dogs but are more closely related to cats and mongooses; the aardwolf is a small hyena that eats mostly termites.
- In Kenya, hornbills and dwarf mongooses team up: the birds catch insects the mongooses disturb and call out warnings of hawks.
- Mongoose comes from Marathi, a language of India, so its plural is mongooses.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «mongoose» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.