vanilla
part of speech
noun (vanilla, uncountable); adjective (vanilla ice cream)
meaning for a pupil
1) Vanilla is a sweet flavour that comes from the seed pods of a kind of orchid plant. tree →
2) Vanilla is a flavour of ice cream, cake and other sweets. tree →
3) Informally, «vanilla» means plain or ordinary, with nothing special added. tree →
sense in the lessons
In everyday life, vanilla is a favourite ice-cream flavour and is used in baking. In science and geography, vanilla pods grow on a climbing orchid in warm countries and must be dried. In maths problems, choosing flavours like vanilla, chocolate and strawberry is used for counting and probability. Phrases: «vanilla ice cream», «vanilla essence», «vanilla extract», «plain vanilla».
examples
- I'd like a vanilla ice cream, please. tree →
- Add a teaspoon of vanilla to the cake mix. tree →
- Vanilla comes from the pod of an orchid. tree →
- Of 20 pupils, 8 chose vanilla, 7 chose chocolate and 5 chose strawberry. tree →
- The cupcakes smelled of vanilla. tree →
- It was just a vanilla phone with no extra features. tree →
note
Uncountable as a flavour: «some vanilla». Spelt with double l. Vanilla extract has alcohol, so it is only used in small amounts in baking. «Vanilla» meaning «plain» is informal.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «vanilla» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.