ultrasound
part of speech
noun (ultrasound, uncountable; an ultrasound, ultrasounds — a scan)
meaning for a pupil
1) Ultrasound is sound that is too high-pitched for humans to hear, but some animals like bats and dogs can hear it. tree →
2) An ultrasound (scan) is a medical test that uses these sound waves to make a picture of the inside of the body, often used to look at a baby before it is born. tree →
3) Ultrasound is also used in cleaning machines and in some medical treatments. tree →
sense in the lessons
In science lessons ultrasound shows that sound is a vibration and that some sounds are beyond our hearing range; bats and dolphins use echoes of high sounds to find their way (echolocation). In everyday family life, a parent might show a grainy ultrasound picture of a new baby. It is safe and does not use X-rays. Phrases: «ultrasound scan», «have an ultrasound», «ultrasound picture».
examples
- Mum showed us the ultrasound of our baby sister. tree →
- Bats use ultrasound to find insects in the dark. tree →
- The doctor used ultrasound to look at Dad's sore knee. tree →
- We can't hear ultrasound, but a dog whistle shows dogs can. tree →
- The ultrasound picture looked like a fuzzy black-and-white blob. tree →
- Dolphins send out ultrasound clicks and listen for the echoes. tree →
- Ultrasound waves bounce back from things inside the body. tree →
note
Uncountable for the sound itself; countable for a scan (an ultrasound, two ultrasounds). «Ultra-» means beyond: beyond the sounds we hear. Compare «infrasound», which is too low to hear. An ultrasound is not an X-ray.
In the corpora
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «ultrasound» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.