plough
part of speech
noun (a plough, ploughs); verb (plough, ploughs, ploughed, ploughing)
meaning for a pupil
1) A big farm tool, pulled by a tractor or animals, that turns over and breaks up the soil to get it ready for planting. tree →
2) (verb) To turn over soil with a plough. tree →
3) (verb) To move or go forward with force: «the car ploughed into the fence». tree →
4) (verb) To keep going with something hard or boring: «plough through homework». tree →
5) The Plough: a group of seven bright stars (UK name for the Big Dipper). tree →
sense in the lessons
In history and science, ploughs helped farmers grow more food. In everyday life, a snowplough clears snow from roads. In astronomy, the Plough points to the North Star. Phrases: «plough through», «snowplough», «plough on».
examples
- The farmer ploughed the field before planting wheat. tree →
- Long ago, horses pulled the plough. tree →
- A snowplough cleared the road. tree →
- I ploughed through my maths homework. tree →
- The car skidded and ploughed into a hedge. tree →
- We found the Plough in the night sky. tree →
- Three brothers are ploughing over there. tree →
note
UK spelling; US spelling is «plow». Rhymes with «cow», not with «through» or «rough». Past: ploughed.
In the corpora
- Gulls follow a tractor ploughing a field, because ploughing turns up worms and grubs.
- When people forget these helpers, things go wrong, as in the 1930s Dust Bowl, when bare ploughed soil simply blew away.
- In autumn farmers plough and sow winter wheat or barley, and gulls and rooks follow the plough to snatch worms and grubs.
- Marmots almost vanished when most steppe was ploughed and came back in reserves in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions.
- Never dig deep tunnels in snow banks, especially near roads, because snow can collapse and ploughs cannot see you.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «plough» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.