sweep

«sweep» in Mova's school dictionary: to clean a floor or path with a brush or broom, pushing… — 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

verb (sweep, sweeps, swept, sweeping); noun (a sweep, sweeps)

meaning for a pupil

1) To sweep means to clean a floor or path with a brush or broom, pushing dirt away. tree →

2) To sweep means to move quickly and with force over an area («The wave swept the sandcastle away»). tree →

3) To sweep means to move in a long, smooth, curving way («She swept her arm across the table»). tree →

4) A sweep is a long, curving movement or a complete search of an area. tree →

5) A sweep (chimney sweep) is a person who cleans chimneys. tree →

sense in the lessons

In everyday life children sweep floors and leaves as chores. In safety, people can be swept away by floods, waves and strong currents, so never walk or drive through floodwater. In sport «a clean sweep» means winning everything. In history, chimney sweeps were often children, a hard and dangerous job. Phrases: «sweep up», «sweep away», «clean sweep», «sweep under the carpet».

examples

• Please sweep the kitchen floor. tree →
• Sweep up the broken glass carefully. tree →
• The flood swept the car away. tree →
• A big wave swept over the rocks. tree →
• The police made a sweep of the park. tree →
• Our team made a clean sweep, winning every race. tree →
• Long ago, children worked as chimney sweeps. tree →
• Don't sweep your problems under the carpet; talk about them. tree →
• He drew the great clean-sweeping sword, and he neared the giant. tree →

note

Irregular: «sweep, swept, swept». A «sweeper» is a person or machine that sweeps. Safety: just 15 cm of fast floodwater can knock you over.

In the corpora

• The African forest buffalo is a smaller, reddish cousin of the savanna buffalo, with swept-back horns that fit dense forest.
• The current sweeps him along until he grabs the edge of a big dark hole in the bank.
• Badger has also sent Otter, disguised as a chimney-sweep, to the back door.
• Keep away from storm drains, ditches and culverts, because fast water can sweep a child into a drain pipe.
• Blowing on soup sweeps away the warm, steamy air above it, so more steam escapes and carries heat away.

Trees and pragmatics

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