sail

«sail» in Mova's school dictionary: a big piece of cloth on a boat that catches the wind and… — 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 (sail, sails); verb (sail, sails, sailed, sailing)

meaning for a pupil

1) A sail is a big piece of cloth on a boat that catches the wind and pushes the boat along. tree →

2) To sail is to travel on water in a boat or ship. tree →

3) To sail is to control a sailing boat. tree →

4) To sail can mean to move smoothly and fast: the ball sailed over the fence. tree →

5) To set sail is to start a journey by sea. tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths: trips with distances and times; boats with sails counted; distance = speed × time. In science: wind is a force that pushes the sail; windmills also have sails. In history: explorers sailed across oceans. In stories: pirates set sail; «plain sailing» means easy.

examples

• The boat sailed 15 miles in 3 hours. tree →
• Each boat has 2 sails. tree →
• They sail 40 km each day. tree →
• How long will it take to sail 60 miles? tree →
• The wind filled the sails. tree →
• The explorers set sail for a new land. tree →
• The ball sailed over the goalkeeper's head. tree →
• We are learning to sail at summer camp. tree →
• After the hard start, the rest was plain sailing. tree →
• And a ship came sailing by. tree →

note

Distance, time and speed: distance = speed × time. Trap: none. Homophone: sale (selling things cheaply). Speed at sea is often in knots (nautical miles per hour). Safety: always wear a life jacket on a boat.

In the corpora

• Charles Darwin sailed around the world on the Beagle from 1831 to 1836, collecting animals, plants and fossils.
• After Columbus crossed the Atlantic, plants and animals sailed both ways, and this swap is called the Columbian exchange.
• Later, cats sailed on ships to catch rats, and that is how they spread around the world.
• Near the equator lies a zone of weak, changing winds called the doldrums, where sailing ships could be stuck for days.
• The Portuguese and Spanish used caravels, small fast ships with triangular lateen sails that could sail closer to the wind.

Trees and pragmatics

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