shale

«shale» in Mova's school dictionary: a soft grey or dark rock made of hardened mud or clay… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (shale — usually uncountable)

meaning for a pupil

1) Shale is a soft grey or dark rock made of hardened mud or clay that splits easily into thin flat layers. tree →

2) Shale is also a source of oil and gas that companies drill for. tree →

sense in the lessons

In geography and science it is a sedimentary rock, made when mud settles and is pressed over millions of years; fossils are often found in it; in news it comes with «shale gas» and «fracking»; phrases: shale gas, shale oil, oil shale.

examples

• The cliff was made of crumbly grey shale. tree →
• Shale splits into thin flakes when you tap it. tree →
• We found a fossil fern in a piece of shale. tree →
• Shale is a sedimentary rock made from mud. tree →
• Some companies drill deep into shale to get gas. tree →
• The path was slippery with loose shale. tree →

note

Usually uncountable: «some shale», «a piece of shale». Do not confuse with «slate», which is shale changed by heat and pressure into a harder rock; and with «shell».

In the corpora

• Shale and mudstone are made of very fine mud that settled in calm water, and they are the most common sedimentary rocks.
• Slate is shale changed by pressure so that it splits into thin, flat sheets, which is why it is used for roofs.

Trees and pragmatics

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