silk
part of speech
noun (silk — uncountable; a silk, silks — for kinds or garments); adjective (silk, silky)
meaning for a pupil
1) A soft, smooth, shiny cloth made from threads spun by silkworms. tree →
2) The thread itself, made by silkworms or spiders. tree →
3) (UK, informal) A senior barrister; to «take silk» means to become one. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons, silkworms (caterpillars of a moth) spin cocoons of silk, and spiders make silk for webs. In history, the Silk Road was a long trade route between China and Europe. In everyday life silk scarves, ties and pyjamas feel smooth. Phrases: smooth as silk, silk scarf, the Silk Road.
examples
- Her dress is made of silk. tree →
- Silkworms spin silk to make their cocoons. tree →
- Spider silk is very strong for its weight. tree →
- Traders carried silk along the Silk Road. tree →
- The scarf felt smooth as silk. tree →
- Dad wore a silk tie to the wedding. tree →
- She wore a silk dress, golden bracelets, and large amber beads. tree →
note
Usually uncountable: some silk, a piece of silk. Silky means soft and smooth like silk, even if not made of it.
In the corpora
- The diving bell spider of European ponds lives underwater in a silk tent filled with air from the surface.
- Spiders make silk in glands in the abdomen and pull it out through spinnerets at the back end, not from wrists or legs.
- Jumping spiders leap many times their body length by pushing blood into their back legs, and tie on a silk safety line first.
- A moth's caterpillar often makes a silk cocoon before it changes, but a butterfly's caterpillar makes a bare chrysalis.
- Many spiders eat their old web before building a new one, to reuse the protein in the silk.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «silk» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.