town
part of speech
noun (town, towns)
meaning for a pupil
1) A town is a place where many people live and work, bigger than a village and smaller than a city. tree →
2) «Town» or «the town» can mean the centre of a place with the shops: «go into town». tree →
3) The people of a town together are also called the town. tree →
sense in the lessons
In school maths: a place in distance problems (from one town to another); people living in a town; population. In geography: villages, towns and cities; maps; settlements. In everyday life: going into town, the town hall, a town square. Phrases: «in town», «go into town», «out of town», «hometown», «town hall».
examples
- The two towns are 60 km apart. tree →
- 2500 people live in the town. tree →
- A bus goes from town A to town B. tree →
- How far is it from the town to the lake? tree →
- We went into town to buy new shoes. tree →
- My grandparents live in a small town by the sea. tree →
- The town hall has a big clock. tree →
- The whole town came to watch the parade. tree →
- "It was in a little town. tree →
note
Countable: «a town». «Go into town» or «go to town» (no «the»). Maths: usually a place, not a number; the distance between towns is the quantity. Trap: «town A to town B and back» doubles the distance.
In the corpora
- In a democracy the grown-ups choose who runs the country and the town.
- Nearly 2000 years ago a volcano buried a Roman town and burned a library of scrolls to black lumps that nobody could open.
- The eastern brown snake causes more serious bites because it lives near farms and towns where it meets people.
- Many gulls have moved into towns and nest on flat rooftops, because cities have food and safe roofs away from foxes.
- Picture a town where nobody has walked for 40 years: birches grow through flats, moss covers the roads.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «town» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.