panda

«panda» in Mova's school dictionary: a large black-and-white bear from the mountain forests of… — 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 panda, pandas; giant panda, red panda)

meaning for a pupil

1) A panda (giant panda) is a large black-and-white bear from the mountain forests of China that eats almost only bamboo. tree →

2) A red panda is a smaller, reddish-brown, furry animal with a long ringed tail; it also eats bamboo but is not a close relative of the giant panda. tree →

3) (UK, old-fashioned) A «panda car» was a small police car. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science and geography lessons pandas come up in habitats, food chains, adaptations (a special wrist bone works like a thumb to grip bamboo) and conservation: there are not many wild pandas, and protecting their bamboo forests helped their numbers grow. In everyday life pandas are a symbol of wildlife protection (the WWF logo) and of China, and are favourite soft toys and zoo animals.

examples

• The panda munched bamboo for most of the day. tree →
• Giant pandas live in the mountains of China. tree →
• A baby panda is tiny and pink when it is born. tree →
• The red panda curled its bushy tail around itself to keep warm. tree →
• Our class adopted a panda through a wildlife charity. tree →
• Pandas have a special wrist bone that helps them hold bamboo. tree →
• There were huge crowds at the zoo to see the new panda cub. tree →
• The panda is the symbol of a famous nature charity. tree →

note

Plural «pandas». A baby is a «cub». Myth: pandas are not lazy — bamboo has little energy in it, so they rest a lot to save energy. The giant panda is a real bear; the red panda is not a bear and is in a family of its own. Pandas are black and white, not black and grey.

In the corpora

• Bamboo flowers and dies all at once every few decades, so pandas need several kinds of bamboo nearby.
• Ueno Zoo in Tokyo opened in 1882 and is Japan's oldest zoo; giant panda twins born there in 2021 drew huge crowds.
• Bamboo has little goodness, so pandas must eat a lot and rest to save energy.
• Young pandas really tumble and roll, and pandas are good climbers that can rest high in tree branches.
• "xióngmāo" means panda, literally "bear-cat"; in Taiwan some people say māoxióng.

Trees and pragmatics

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