stomach

«stomach» in Mova's school dictionary: the bag-like organ inside your body where food goes after… — 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 stomach, stomachs); verb (can't stomach something — can't bear it)

meaning for a pupil

1) Your stomach is the bag-like organ inside your body where food goes after you swallow it and starts to be broken down. tree →

2) People also use «stomach» for the front of the body below the chest (the tummy or belly). tree →

3) If you can't stomach something, you can't bear it or eat it. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science the stomach is part of the digestive system: food goes down the food pipe to the stomach, where strong acid and muscles mash it, then on to the intestines. In health lessons: a stomach ache can come from eating too much, germs or worry; «butterflies in your stomach» is the nervous feeling before something big. Phrases: stomach ache, an upset stomach, on an empty stomach, butterflies in my stomach, lie on your stomach.

examples

• My stomach hurts because I ate too much cake. tree →
• Food goes from your mouth to your stomach. tree →
• I have butterflies in my stomach before the race. tree →
• Don't swim straight after a big meal on a full stomach if you feel unwell. tree →
• The doctor pressed on my stomach to check it. tree →
• Lie on your stomach to do this stretch. tree →
• My stomach is rumbling; it must be lunchtime. tree →
• Your stomach makes acid to help break down food. tree →
• His stomach seemed a bottomless pit. tree →

note

Spelling trap: stomach ends in «-ach» but sounds like «STUM-uk». Plural: stomachs. «Tummy» is the children's word; «belly» is informal. Myth: the old rule that you must wait an hour after eating before swimming is not proven, but big cramps or feeling sick are reasons to rest.

In the corpora

• A newborn baby needs feeding every two or three hours, day and night, because its stomach is tiny.
• Fizzy drinks are full of carbon dioxide gas, which collects in the stomach and comes back up as a burp.
• A cow's stomach has four parts, and it chews its food twice, bringing it back up as cud.
• Sea turtles eat jellyfish, and floating plastic bags look like jellyfish, so turtles sometimes swallow plastic, which can block their stomachs.
• Anglerfish and gulper eels can swallow prey as big as themselves or bigger, because their mouths open very wide and their stomachs stretch.

Trees and pragmatics

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