silkworm
part of speech
noun (a silkworm, silkworms)
meaning for a pupil
A silkworm is the caterpillar of the silk moth, which spins a cocoon of fine silk thread; people use this thread to make silk cloth. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science and history lessons silkworms show life cycles (egg, caterpillar, cocoon/pupa, moth) and the story of silk: it was first made in ancient China, which kept the secret for a long time, and silk was traded along the Silk Road. Silkworms eat only mulberry leaves. One cocoon can be made of a single thread up to about 1 km long. To get the silk, the cocoons are usually boiled, which kills the pupa — some people prefer «peace silk». Phrases: «silkworm cocoon», «mulberry leaves», «the Silk Road».
examples
- Silkworms eat only mulberry leaves. tree →
- The silkworm spun a white cocoon around itself. tree →
- Silk cloth is made from the thread of silkworms. tree →
- Ancient China kept silkworms secret for centuries. tree →
- Our class watched silkworms turn into moths. tree →
- A single silkworm cocoon is made of one very long thread. tree →
- Silkworm moths cannot fly. tree →
note
Plural «silkworms». Trap: a silkworm is not a worm; it is a caterpillar (an insect larva). Silk moths have been kept by people for so long that they can no longer live in the wild.
In the corpora
- They are silkworms, and people in China have kept them for thousands of years.
- Silkworms are the caterpillars of the domestic silk moth, and they eat almost nothing but fresh mulberry leaves.
- A silkworm grows thousands of times heavier in about a month and sheds its skin four times, because old skin cannot stretch.
- For a long time making silk was a secret, and carrying silkworm eggs out of China was forbidden.
- A silkworm has six true, pointed legs at the front, like every insect, and ten soft stumpy legs further back.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «silkworm» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.