shrink

«shrink» in Mova's school dictionary: to get smaller, or to make something smaller — 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

verb (shrink, shrinks, shrank, shrunk, shrinking); noun (shrink — informal word for a mental health doctor)

meaning for a pupil

1) To shrink means to get smaller, or to make something smaller. tree →

2) Clothes can shrink when they are washed in hot water. tree →

3) To shrink back or shrink away is to move back because you are afraid. tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths: a decrease in size or amount; the new size is the old size minus the change; «shrank to 25» gives the new size, «shrank by 4» gives the change; scaling a shape down. In science: most things shrink when they get cold and grow when warm. In stories: Alice shrank after drinking from a bottle. Phrases: shrink by, shrink to, shrink in the wash, shrink away.

examples

• The sweater shrank by 4 cm. tree →
• The pond shrinks 2 cm each day. tree →
• How long is the shirt after it shrinks? tree →
• The class shrank from 30 to 25 pupils. tree →
• My jumper shrank in the hot wash. tree →
• Alice drank from the bottle and began to shrink. tree →
• Metal shrinks a little when it gets cold. tree →
• The puddle shrank in the hot sun. tree →
• "Will the dog bite me?" asked Proserpina, shrinking closer to Pluto. tree →

note

Irregular verb: shrink, shrank, shrunk. Opposite: grow, expand, stretch. Means take away: new = old − shrink. Trap: «shrank to 25» gives the new size, not the change.

In the corpora

• Rent is often a family's biggest bill, so when it goes up, other spending has to shrink.
• Tense music, close-ups and slow motion make ordinary mistakes feel dangerous; turn the sound down and the drama shrinks.
• Ants are strong for their size because weight shrinks faster than strength as an animal gets smaller.
• When climates changed, forests shrank and, in some places, people arrived and hunted, so many giants died out.
• Earlier, Alice nibbles a mushroom to grow and shrink and talks with a hookah-smoking Caterpillar.

Trees and pragmatics

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