toothpaste
part of speech
noun (toothpaste — uncountable; a toothpaste, toothpastes for types)
meaning for a pupil
Toothpaste is a soft paste that you put on a toothbrush to clean your teeth. tree →
sense in the lessons
In health and hygiene, you brush your teeth twice a day for two minutes with toothpaste that has fluoride, which makes teeth strong and stops holes (cavities). Children need only a small pea-sized amount, and should spit it out, not swallow it. You can rinse lightly or not at all after brushing so the fluoride keeps working. In everyday life a «tube of toothpaste» is squeezed from the bottom.
examples
- Put a pea-sized blob of toothpaste on your brush. tree →
- Don't swallow the toothpaste; spit it out. tree →
- We've run out of toothpaste. tree →
- This toothpaste tastes of mint. tree →
- Fluoride toothpaste helps stop tooth decay. tree →
- Squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the bottom. tree →
- My little brother likes strawberry toothpaste. tree →
note
Usually uncountable: «some toothpaste», «a tube of toothpaste». One word: toothpaste. Swallowing a lot of toothpaste is not good, especially for small children. Toothpaste is not for cleaning cuts or burns (a myth says it helps burns — it does not; use cool running water).
In the corpora
- Some things are tricky: toothpaste, ketchup and cornflour slime behave like a solid one moment and a liquid the next.
- Toothpaste and ketchup are fine solid bits in a liquid; they sit still until pushed hard enough, then flow.
- Bacteria on teeth make acid from sugar, which damages enamel; toothpaste is slightly alkaline, and fluoride in it makes enamel tougher.
- Food, rubbish and even toothpaste must be stored away from bears at a campsite.
- After brushing you spit out the toothpaste but do not rinse straight away, so the fluoride keeps protecting the teeth.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «toothpaste» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.