vole

«vole» in Mova's school dictionary: a small, plump rodent like a mouse, with a short tail… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a vole, voles)

meaning for a pupil

A vole is a small, plump rodent like a mouse, with a short tail, small ears and a blunt nose, that lives in fields, woods and riverbanks. tree →

sense in the lessons

In nature lessons voles are an important part of food chains: owls, kestrels, foxes, weasels and stoats eat lots of them. The water vole is a British riverbank animal that has become rare because of American mink and loss of habitat; Ratty in «The Wind in the Willows» is really a water vole. Phrases: «field vole», «bank vole», «water vole».

examples

• A barn owl swooped down and caught a vole. tree →
• Voles have shorter tails than mice. tree →
• Ratty in «The Wind in the Willows» is really a water vole. tree →
• Water voles dig burrows in riverbanks. tree →
• We found vole tunnels in the long grass. tree →
• Voles eat grass, roots and seeds. tree →
• The kestrel hovered, looking for voles. tree →

note

Plural «voles». Trap: a vole is not a mole (a mole digs underground and eats worms) and not exactly a mouse (shorter tail, rounder face). Rhymes with «hole».

In the corpora

• A barn owl family can eat thousands of mice and voles in a year, so farmers put up owl boxes.
• Pull it apart with tweezers and you can count the skulls of the mice and voles it ate.
• A great grey owl can plunge through deep snow to grab a vole it has only heard.

Trees and pragmatics

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