staple
part of speech
noun (a staple, staples); verb (staple, staples, stapled, stapling); adjective (staple)
meaning for a pupil
1) A small piece of thin bent wire pushed through papers to hold them together. tree →
2) To fasten things together with staples. tree →
3) A basic food or thing that people use or eat all the time, such as rice or bread. tree →
4) (adjective) Main, basic, most important: a staple food. tree →
5) A U-shaped metal pin hammered into wood to hold a wire. tree →
sense in the lessons
In the classroom a stapler puts staples in worksheets. In geography and history, «staple foods» are the main foods of a place: rice in much of Asia, potatoes in Ireland in the past, maize, wheat. In everyday life «a staple» is something you always have. Phrases: «staple food», «staple diet», «staple the pages», «a staple of».
examples
- Please staple your pages together before you hand them in. tree →
- The stapler has run out of staples. tree →
- Rice is the staple food for billions of people. tree →
- Bread and milk are staples in our kitchen. tree →
- Fish was a staple of their diet. tree →
- The teacher stapled our drawings on the board. tree →
- Be careful not to staple your finger! tree →
- Pasta is a staple in our house. tree →
- But beside these more modern collections there exist in old and middle Irish a large number of hero-tales (class 2) which formed the staple of the old ollahms or bards. tree →
note
«Staple» (a fastener, or a basic thing) is not «stable» (steady, or a building for horses). Stapling: drop the «e» before -ing. The machine is a «stapler». The adjective sense comes before a noun: «a staple food».
In the corpora
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «staple» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.