torture

«torture» in Mova's school dictionary: Causing great pain to someone on purpose, to punish them… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (torture — uncountable; a torture); verb (torture, tortures, tortured, torturing)

meaning for a pupil

1) Causing great pain to someone on purpose, to punish them or make them say something. tree →

2) (verb) To hurt someone in this way. tree →

3) (informal, joking) Something very unpleasant or boring: this traffic is torture. tree →

sense in the lessons

In history lessons torture was used in the past and is now against international law. In everyday talk children use it as a joke: waiting for the holidays is torture. Phrases: sheer torture, torture chamber.

examples

• Torture is against the law in almost every country. tree →
• The castle had an old torture chamber. tree →
• Waiting in the queue was torture. tree →
• Stop torturing your sister with that silly song! tree →
• Long car journeys are torture for my little brother. tree →
• He was tortured by doubts about his choice. tree →
• "Perhaps they'll take to torturing me too!" tree →

note

The joking sense is common but the real sense is very serious. Adjective torturous (painful), not to be confused with tortuous (twisty, full of bends).

In the corpora

• "Enhanced interrogation" means torture (US).

Trees and pragmatics

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