oyster

«oyster» in Mova's school dictionary: A sea animal with a soft body inside a rough, hinged… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (an oyster, oysters)

meaning for a pupil

1) A sea animal with a soft body inside a rough, hinged shell; some are eaten as food. tree →

2) A pearl oyster: a kind of oyster that can make a pearl inside its shell. tree →

3) In the saying «the world is your oyster»: you can go anywhere and do anything you choose. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, oysters are molluscs that filter water to feed; oyster reefs clean the sea. In history and food, oysters were once a cheap food in London. The idiom «the world is your oyster» is often said to young people leaving school. Phrases: «oyster shell», «pearl oyster», «oyster bed», «the world is your oyster».

examples

• An oyster has a hard rough shell. tree →
• A pearl grows inside an oyster when sand or grit gets in. tree →
• Oysters clean the water by filtering it. tree →
• Grandad loves eating oysters at the seaside. tree →
• You're young and clever — the world is your oyster! tree →
• Fishermen collected oysters from the oyster beds. tree →
• London's «Oyster card» is used to pay for buses and the Tube. tree →
• One day the fisherman went out fishing, and among his catch for the day he brought home three dozen oysters. tree →

note

Countable: an oyster, oysters (use «an»). Myth: not every oyster makes pearls, and pearls usually form around a tiny parasite or bit of tissue, not just a grain of sand. Safety: raw oysters can make people ill; only eat them fresh from a safe source.

In the corpora

• You're enough to try the patience of an oyster!"

Trees and pragmatics

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