porcupines
part of speech
noun, plural of porcupine (one porcupine, two porcupines)
meaning for a pupil
1) Porcupines are more than one porcupine: large rodents covered in long sharp quills that protect them from predators. tree →
2) There are New World porcupines, which climb trees in the Americas, and Old World porcupines, which live on the ground in Africa, Asia and southern Europe. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons about adaptations and defence, porcupines show how animals protect themselves: their quills come loose and stick in an attacker. They eat plants, bark and fruit, and they are mostly active at night. In stories porcupines are prickly or shy characters. Phrases: a family of porcupines, porcupines' quills.
examples
- Porcupines are covered in thousands of sharp quills. tree →
- Porcupines are mostly awake at night. tree →
- In winter, North American porcupines chew tree bark. tree →
- Porcupines rattle their quills to warn enemies. tree →
- Young porcupines are called porcupettes. tree →
- Wolves usually leave porcupines alone. tree →
- Porcupines are good at climbing trees. tree →
- We made porcupines out of clay and cocktail sticks. tree →
note
This is the plural form; the singular is «porcupine». Possessive plural: «the porcupines' quills» (apostrophe after the s). Myth: porcupines cannot shoot their quills. Porcupines are rodents, unlike hedgehogs and echidnas, which also have spines.
In the corpora
- Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the barbed quills come out easily when touched and stick into the attacker.
- The American and the African and Asian porcupines are only distant relatives, and many scientists think they grew quills separately.
- Porcupines can't shoot their quills; the quills come loose easily when touched and stick into an attacker.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «porcupines» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.