shrew

«shrew» in Mova's school dictionary: a tiny mammal with a long pointed nose, small eyes and… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a shrew, shrews)

meaning for a pupil

1) A shrew is a tiny mammal with a long pointed nose, small eyes and soft fur, that looks a bit like a mouse but eats insects and worms. tree →

2) (old-fashioned, insulting) A shrew was an old word for a bad-tempered woman who often scolds; this use is now seen as unkind. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science lessons about food chains and British wildlife the shrew is a small insect-eater that has to eat almost all the time because it burns energy so fast. Owls and cats hunt them. In old stories and the play title «The Taming of the Shrew» the word is used in its old insulting sense. Phrases: pygmy shrew, common shrew, water shrew, shrew-like.

examples

• A shrew must eat every few hours or it will starve. tree →
• The cat brought a dead shrew into the kitchen. tree →
• Shrews have pointed noses that twitch all the time. tree →
• The pygmy shrew is one of Britain's smallest mammals. tree →
• A water shrew can swim and dive for food. tree →
• The owl swooped down and caught a shrew. tree →
• A shrew is not a mouse; it eats insects, not seeds. tree →
• In old books a cross woman was rudely called a shrew. tree →
• There was once upon a time a lark who was the Tsar among the birds, and he took unto himself as his Tsaritsa a little shrew-mouse. tree →

note

Countable: one shrew, two shrews. Pronounced «shroo». Trap: shrews are not rodents like mice; they are in a different group with moles and hedgehogs (insect-eaters). The adjective «shrewish» means bad-tempered; but «shrewd» (clever and good at judging) is a different word, though it comes from the same old root. Calling a person a shrew is rude.

In the corpora

• The smallest shrews weigh about as much as a paperclip or two, while an elephant weighs several tonnes, millions of times more.
• Tenrecs look like hedgehogs or shrews but are actually related to elephants and aardvarks, African animals that dig for ants.
• Some shrews and tenrecs use simple echoes from squeaks to explore tunnels and thick grass.
• Some giant pitcher plants in Borneo are used as toilets by tree shrews, and the plant feeds on their droppings.

Trees and pragmatics

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