sponge

«sponge» in Mova's school dictionary: a soft thing full of holes that soaks up water, used for… — 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

noun (a sponge, sponges); verb (sponge, sponges, sponged, sponging)

meaning for a pupil

1) A sponge is a soft thing full of holes that soaks up water, used for washing or cleaning. tree →

2) A sponge is a simple sea animal that lives fixed to rocks and has a body full of holes. tree →

3) A sponge or sponge cake is a light, soft cake. tree →

4) To sponge something is to wipe or clean it with a wet sponge. tree →

5) To sponge off someone means to keep taking money or food from them without giving back (informal). tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, a sponge shows absorbency: it soaks up water because of its many holes. In nature lessons, sea sponges are animals, not plants. In everyday life, people wash cars and dishes with a sponge, and eat Victoria sponge cake. Phrases: «soak up like a sponge» (learn quickly), «sponge bath».

examples

• Wipe the table with a damp sponge. tree →
• The sponge soaked up all the spilled juice. tree →
• Sea sponges are animals that live on the ocean floor. tree →
• Grandma baked a jam sponge for tea. tree →
• She sponged the mud off her coat. tree →
• Little children soak up new words like a sponge. tree →
• We tested which material absorbs most water, and the sponge won. tree →
• The angry Merchant immediately turned about and drove the Ass back to the seashore, where he loaded him with two great baskets of sponges. tree →

note

Countable noun; regular verb (sponged). Spelled with «o» but said «spunj». A sea sponge is an animal even though it does not move. In experiments, weigh the sponge before and after soaking: the difference is the water it holds.

In the corpora

• Wetlands soak up flood water like giant sponges and let it out slowly, and reed roots trap mud and clean the water.
• Wild chimpanzees make tools: they fish for termites with stripped twigs, crack nuts with stones and use leaves as sponges.
• Hawksbill turtles eat sponges that many other animals cannot eat, and this helps corals have more space to grow.
• The frogfish looks like a sponge or rock, waits for fish and swallows them quickly, even fish as big as itself.
• Forces do not only change speed: squeeze a sponge and you change its shape.

Trees and pragmatics

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