wings

«wings» in Mova's school dictionary: the body parts a bird, bat or insect moves to fly — 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 (plural of wing: a wing, wings)

meaning for a pupil

1) Wings are the body parts a bird, bat or insect moves to fly. tree →

2) Wings are the long flat parts sticking out from the sides of an aeroplane. tree →

3) A wing is a part of a building that sticks out from the main part. tree →

4) The wings of a stage are the hidden sides where actors wait. tree →

5) In sports, the wings are the sides of the pitch, and a winger plays there. tree →

6) To try your wings means to start doing something new on your own for the first time. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, birds, bats and insects have wings, but they are built differently; most birds use feathers, bats have skin stretched over long fingers, and insects have thin wings; some birds like penguins and ostriches cannot fly. In stories and sayings: «take someone under your wing» means to look after them; «spread your wings» means to try new things. Phrases: chicken wings, wait in the wings, on the wing.

examples

• The bird flapped its wings and flew away. tree →
• Butterflies have colourful wings. tree →
• The plane's wings are very long. tree →
• Penguins have wings but cannot fly. tree →
• A bat's wings are made of skin. tree →
• The hospital has a new children's wing. tree →
• The actors waited in the wings. tree →
• The older girl took me under her wing on my first day. tree →
• I want to try my wings.” tree →

note

Singular: wing. Insects usually have four wings (flies have two); birds have two. Maths: counting problems like «5 birds have how many wings?» → 5 x 2 = 10.

In the corpora

• A dragonfly has 6 legs and 4 wings, like many insects.
• All birds have two wings and two legs; most have four toes on each foot, but the ostrich has only two.
• A hoverfly has one pair of wings and can hover still in the air, while a wasp has two pairs.
• Millions of years ago, when the air held more oxygen, some dragonfly relatives had wings about 70 centimetres across.
• Owl butterflies have large eye spots on the underside of their wings that may startle birds or draw their pecks away from the body.

Trees and pragmatics

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