stump
part of speech
noun (a stump, stumps); verb (stump, stumps, stumped, stumping)
meaning for a pupil
1) A stump is the short part of a tree trunk left in the ground after the tree is cut down. tree →
2) A stump is the short part left of something worn or cut, like a pencil stump or the stump of a leg. tree →
3) In cricket, the stumps are the three upright sticks that make the wicket. tree →
4) To stump someone is to ask them something so hard they cannot answer. tree →
5) To stump is to walk with heavy, stamping steps. tree →
sense in the lessons
In nature lessons, you can count the rings on a tree stump to find its age. In cricket (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland), the bowler tries to hit the stumps. In quizzes, a hard question stumps the class. Phrases: «tree stump», «be stumped», «stumped for words».
examples
- We sat on an old tree stump to eat lunch. tree →
- Count the rings on the stump to find the tree's age. tree →
- The ball knocked over the stumps, and he was out. tree →
- That riddle stumped everyone in the class. tree →
- I'm stumped — I have no idea! tree →
- He stumped up the stairs in a bad mood. tree →
- My pencil is just a stump now. tree →
- He came to the charred stumps. tree →
note
Countable noun; regular verb («stumped»). «Be stumped» means «not know the answer». In science, each ring on a stump usually shows one year of growth, so 30 rings means about 30 years old.
In the corpora
- A platypus has a broad flat tail, and a koala has only a tiny stump of a tail hidden in its fur.
- Some old tree stumps stay alive for years because their roots are joined to nearby trees, which keep them fed with sugar.
- At first it's fun: twigs crackle, logs trip him, fungus on stumps looks like funny faces.
- That was never done by a branch or a stump.
- Counting the rings in a stump tells us roughly how old the tree was.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «stump» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.