stinger
part of speech
noun (a stinger, stingers)
meaning for a pupil
1) A stinger is the sharp part on an insect or animal, such as a bee, wasp or scorpion, that it uses to sting. tree →
2) A stinger can be an animal or plant that stings, like a stinging jellyfish (Australia) or a nettle. tree →
3) (informal) A stinger is a painful hit, remark or ending, something that «stings». tree →
sense in the lessons
In science and nature lessons, children learn that bees, wasps, scorpions and stingrays have stingers for defence. In safety lessons, you learn to scrape out a bee stinger gently and to tell an adult. In Australia, «stingers» often means box jellyfish and other stinging jellyfish in the sea in summer. Phrases: «the bee's stinger», «stinger suit», «stinger season» (Australia).
examples
- A honeybee leaves its stinger in your skin. tree →
- Mum scraped the stinger out with a bank card. tree →
- A scorpion's stinger is at the end of its tail. tree →
- The stingray's stinger is on its tail. tree →
- We wore stinger suits when we swam at the beach in Queensland. tree →
- The wasp waved its stinger at us. tree →
- That last goal was a real stinger for the other team. tree →
- Only female bees and wasps have stingers. tree →
- Fionn would run his best to get away from that prickly stinger, but how he would run when it was his turn to deal the strokes! tree →
note
Countable. Myth: all bees die after stinging — only honeybees usually do, because their barbed stinger gets stuck; wasps and bumblebees can sting again. The word for the injury is «a sting», not «a stinger».
In the corpora
- Honeybees die after stinging people because the barbed stinger sticks in skin and tears out, but not when stinging other insects.
- A honeybee leaves its barbed stinger in the skin and dies after stinging.
- A bee stinger should be scraped out quickly, because it keeps pumping venom for a short while.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «stinger» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.