van

«van» in Mova's school dictionary: a vehicle bigger than a car and smaller than a truck… — 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 (van, vans)

meaning for a pupil

1) A van is a vehicle bigger than a car and smaller than a truck, used for carrying people or goods. tree →

2) A van with seats can carry a group, like a school team; a van with no back seats carries boxes, tools or furniture. tree →

3) «In the van» or «in the vanguard» can also mean at the front of a march or a change (rare). tree →

sense in the lessons

In school maths: a carrier with seats or a load; seats per van is a rate and the question asks how many vans are needed for a group. In everyday life: delivery vans bring parcels, an ice-cream van plays music in the street, a camper van is for holidays, a moving van carries furniture to a new home. Phrases: «a delivery van», «a camper van», «a moving van», «by van».

examples

• Each van holds 8 people. tree →
• 3 vans carry 45 boxes. tree →
• How many vans are needed for 30 children? tree →
• The van drove 60 miles. tree →
• The delivery van brought our new fridge. tree →
• We heard the ice-cream van playing its tune. tree →
• Dad hired a moving van to take our beds to the new house. tree →
• The football team travelled to the match in two vans. tree →
• They placed straw round the coffin, and the van drove away. tree →

note

Plural «vans». Countable: «a van». A van is not a car and not a truck — in between. Maths: seats per van is a rate; vans needed = people ÷ seats, rounded up, because a few leftover children still need one more van. Safety: never get into a stranger's van.

In the corpora

• Usually the facts are small and boring: a car, a van, an ambulance, a police car for twenty minutes.
• Van Gogh painted his own versions of prints by the Japanese artist Hiroshige to learn from them, and that influence changed his style.
• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first saw tiny living things in water, which he called «animalcules», with homemade lenses in the 1670s.
• It turned out he had driven a delivery van for thirty years and «knew how corners work».
• Jacob's mum in Leeds told him the ice-cream van plays its music when it has run out of ice cream.

Trees and pragmatics

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