stick
part of speech
noun, verb (stick, sticks, stuck, sticking)
meaning for a pupil
1) A stick is a thin piece of wood, often fallen from a tree. tree →
2) A stick is a long thin thing: a walking stick, a hockey stick, a glue stick, a stick of celery. tree →
3) To stick is to fix one thing to another with glue or tape. tree →
4) To stick is to push a pointed thing into something: stick a pin in. tree →
5) To stick is to become fixed and unable to move: the door sticks. tree →
6) To stick with something is to keep doing it. tree →
7) Stick can also be an informal, affectionate name for a friend, as in "old stick". tree →
sense in the lessons
Maths: a thing counted (sticks, ice-cream sticks, glue sticks); to stick stickers onto a page: «sticks 5 on each page» is a rate. Counting sticks and tally sticks in early maths. Everyday: stick together, stick to the rules, stick out your tongue, stick up for someone. Safety: don't run with a stick.
examples
- Tom collected 24 sticks for the fire. tree →
- Each pack has 6 glue sticks. tree →
- She sticks 5 stickers on each page. tree →
- A stick is 30 centimeters long. tree →
- The dog fetched the stick from the river. tree →
- Grandpa walks with a stick. tree →
- Stick the picture into your book. tree →
- Friends stick together. tree →
- Stick to the path in the forest. tree →
- “OLD Stick!” said the Rocket, “impossible! tree →
note
Irregular verb: stick, stuck, stuck. As a noun just the thing counted; «sticks 5 on each page» is a rate, so the total is pages × 5. Trap: «stuck» can mean «not able to move». Sticky = covered in something that sticks.
In the corpora
- Newcomers are busy and tired; the friendly thing is to say hello first instead of deciding they are «stuck up».
- Repeat a guess enough times and it sticks to a person like a label.
- A quote stuck on a picture of a famous face is very easy to fake; look for where the person really said it.
- Elephants sometimes use tools, such as a stick to scratch an itch or a leafy branch to swat flies.
- Kangaroos hop with springy tendons that store energy like a pogo stick, so hopping fast costs them hardly more energy than hopping slowly.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «stick» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.