tried
part of speech
verb (past tense and past participle of try: try, tries, tried, trying); adjective (tried and tested)
meaning for a pupil
1) Past of «try»: made an effort to do something (I tried to lift the box). tree →
2) Tested or tasted something to see what it is like (I tried sushi). tree →
3) Put on clothes to see if they fit (She tried on the shoes). tree →
4) Judged a person in a law court (He was tried for theft). tree →
5) Tried and tested / tried and true: proven to work well. tree →
sense in the lessons
At school effort matters: «I tried my best» and «Have you tried another way?» show a growth mindset. In maths, «I tried 5 and it was too small, so I tried 6» is trial and improvement. In science you try ideas and test them. In stories, characters try and fail before they succeed. Phrases: tried to, tried on, tried out, tried my best, tried and tested.
examples
- I tried to lift the box, but it was too heavy. tree →
- Have you tried the new ice cream flavour? tree →
- She tried on three dresses before choosing. tree →
- We tried 4 × 6, but the answer was too small, so we tried 4 × 7. tree →
- He tried his best, and that's what matters. tree →
- They tried out for the football team. tree →
- This is a tried and tested recipe. tree →
- Michael had tried on his spectacles. tree →
note
Spelling: try → tried, tries (y changes to i), but trying keeps the y. «Tried to do» = made an effort; «tried doing» = did it as a test to see if it helps.
In the corpora
- With hundreds of thousands of kinds, beetles have tried almost every way of living.
- Alice says she tried "How doth the little busy bee" but "it all came different".
- The third swallow tried «stopping on» one year: «O the weary length of the nights!
- Consonant + y changes to i before -ed (cried, tried) but stays before -ing (crying, trying).
- Answers at the back of a book are for checking your work after you have tried.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «tried» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.