straw
part of speech
noun (straw, straws)
meaning for a pupil
1) Straw is the dry yellow stalks of plants like wheat, used for animal beds or to make hats and baskets. tree →
2) A straw is a thin tube for drinking. tree →
3) «The last straw» is the last small problem that makes you lose patience. tree →
4) To draw straws is to choose by picking from straws of different lengths. tree →
sense in the lessons
Maths: drinking straws counted in packs; bales of straw on a farm. Farming: straw for bedding, hay for food. Environment: plastic straws harm sea life; use paper or reusable ones. Stories: the three little pigs built a house of straw.
examples
- A box has 100 straws. tree →
- Each child used 2 straws. tree →
- The farmer has 30 bales of straw. tree →
- She bought 4 packs of 25 straws. tree →
- The first little pig built his house of straw. tree →
- The horse sleeps on a bed of straw. tree →
- Paper straws are better for the ocean than plastic ones. tree →
- We drew straws to see who would go first. tree →
- Soon the straw hut was ready. tree →
note
Countable for drinking straws (a straw, straws); uncountable for the farm material (some straw, a bale of straw). The thing counted, often in packs or bales; «packs of 25» means multiply. Trap: straw (dry stalks for bedding) is not hay (dried grass for food).
In the corpora
- Gorillas and other great apes build a new nest of leaves and branches every night, or of straw in a zoo.
- A straw in water looks bent because light changes direction as it passes from water to air (refraction).
- A straw in water looks bent because light changes direction as it passes from water to air; this is called refraction.
- Pee colour is a simple check: pale straw means you've drunk enough, and dark yellow often means you need more water.
- On the Moon, where there is no air, drinking through a straw would not work at all.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «straw» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.