tunnel

«tunnel» in Mova's school dictionary: a long passage under the ground, through a hill, or under… — 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

noun (a tunnel, tunnels); verb (tunnel, tunnels, tunnelled or tunneled, tunnelling or tunneling)

meaning for a pupil

1) A tunnel is a long passage under the ground, through a hill, or under water, for cars, trains or people. tree →

2) A tunnel is a passage dug by an animal, like a rabbit or mole. tree →

3) To tunnel is to dig a tunnel through or under something. tree →

sense in the lessons

In geography and technology, famous tunnels include the Channel Tunnel between England and France, and subway or Underground tunnels in big cities. In science, moles, rabbits, earthworms and ants make tunnels; earthworm tunnels help air and water get into soil. In safety, never play in drains, storm water tunnels or abandoned mine tunnels; they can flood or collapse. Phrases: «go through a tunnel», «dig a tunnel», «light at the end of the tunnel» (hope that a hard time will end), «tunnel vision».

examples

• The train went through a long tunnel. tree →
• The Channel Tunnel goes under the sea. tree →
• Moles dig tunnels under the lawn. tree →
• The children crawled through the play tunnel. tree →
• Earthworms tunnel through the soil. tree →
• The prisoners tunnelled out of the castle. tree →
• There's light at the end of the tunnel. tree →
• Never go into storm drain tunnels. tree →
• Suddenly there came along a great water-rat that lived in the tunnel. tree →

note

Plural tunnels. Past: «tunnelled» (UK, Australia, NZ) or «tunneled» (USA). A tunnel goes through or under; a bridge goes over.

In the corpora

• Aquarium tunnels are made of acrylic many centimetres thick, strong enough to hold back millions of litres of water.
• Meerkats live in big burrows with many tunnels and sleep piled together, because deserts get cold at night.
• Gerbils come from deserts where they live in tunnels, so they love a deep layer of bedding to dig in.
• Some shrews and tenrecs use simple echoes from squeaks to explore tunnels and thick grass.
• People once cut tunnels through giant sequoias for cars as a tourist trick, and one tunnel tree fell in a storm in 2017.

Trees and pragmatics

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