phone
part of speech
noun (phone, phones); verb (phone, phones, phoned, phoning)
meaning for a pupil
1) A phone is a device for calling and talking to people far away. A mobile phone (cell phone) can also send messages, take photos and use the internet. tree →
2) To phone is to call someone. tree →
3) «On the phone» means talking by phone. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths: a thing bought with a price; calls made; minutes or battery used; saving for a phone. In everyday life: calling family, emergency calls (911 in the USA and Canada, 999 or 112 in the UK and Ireland, 000 in Australia, 111 in New Zealand). In science: phones send signals by radio waves. Safety: do not share personal details or photos with strangers by phone.
examples
- The phone costs 200 dollars. tree →
- She talked on the phone for 15 minutes. tree →
- He saves 20 dollars a week for a phone. tree →
- She phoned her grandma 3 times this week. tree →
- The phone battery is at 20 percent. tree →
- In an emergency, phone 911. tree →
- Put your phone away during dinner. tree →
- Don't answer calls from numbers you don't know. tree →
- Dad is on the phone with the doctor. tree →
note
Usually a thing bought: cost and saving problems. Minutes of calls add up. Trap: «phone» is the thing, its price is the number. «Phone» is short for telephone; «ph» sounds like «f». British: mobile; American: cell phone. Learn your emergency number by heart.
In the corpora
- Example: in a café in Toronto, Mum taps her phone on the reader and the coffee is paid in a second.
- In Manchester, Mum sits with the phone at 7.59, ready to ring the surgery the second it opens.
- Families make phone rules so meals are for talking, and adults find them hard to keep because phones are built to grab attention.
- Grown-ups keep friends' secrets too, so whispering on the phone is often about someone else's private problem.
- Lots of young adults find phone calls to strangers scary; planning what to say first helps, and it gets easier with practice.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «phone» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.