puddle
part of speech
noun (a puddle, puddles)
meaning for a pupil
A puddle is a small pool of water (or other liquid) on the ground, often after rain. tree →
sense in the lessons
In everyday life children love jumping in puddles in wellies (rain boots). In safety, puddles can hide holes and be slippery, especially when frozen; never play in puddles near roads, and splashing cars can soak you. Big floodwater is not a puddle: never walk or play in floodwater. In science, puddles dry up because the water evaporates, faster in sun and wind; you can draw round a puddle with chalk to watch it shrink.
examples
- We jumped in all the puddles on the way home. tree →
- Put your wellies on; there are puddles everywhere. tree →
- The puddle froze overnight and was very slippery. tree →
- A car drove through the puddle and splashed us. tree →
- The puddle got smaller as the water evaporated. tree →
- The puppy left a puddle on the floor. tree →
- Draw a chalk line around the puddle and check it later. tree →
- She saw the dirty puddle in the street. tree →
note
Countable: a puddle, puddles. Double d. A puddle is small; a «pond» is a larger body of water that stays; a «pool» can be either. Myth: puddles soak into the ground only — they also evaporate into the air.
In the corpora
- Puddles dry faster on sunny, windy days: the sun gives energy and the wind carries the vapour away.
- Walk around frozen puddles, because ice is very slippery.
- Jump only in shallow puddles away from roads, and never in water you cannot see the bottom of.
- Deep or flooded puddles can hide holes, drains and sharp things.
- Maddie had fallen in a puddle at break, and her trousers were brown to the knees.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «puddle» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.