wobble
part of speech
verb (wobble, wobbles, wobbled, wobbling); noun (a wobble, wobbles)
meaning for a pupil
1) To wobble is to move unsteadily from side to side, as if about to fall. tree →
2) A wobble is an unsteady movement. tree →
3) To wobble can mean to feel unsure or not confident for a moment. tree →
sense in the lessons
In everyday life and safety, a wobbly chair, ladder or loose tooth wobbles; wobbly things should be fixed or not stood on. Learning to ride a bike, children wobble at first. In science, a spinning top wobbles as it slows down. In stories, jelly wobbles. Phrases: «wobbly tooth», «have a wobble», «wobble on a bike».
examples
- The jelly wobbled on the plate. tree →
- My front tooth is wobbling. tree →
- I wobbled a lot when I first rode my bike. tree →
- Don't stand on the wobbly chair. tree →
- The table wobbles because one leg is short. tree →
- The top wobbled and then fell over. tree →
- She had a wobble before her solo but sang beautifully. tree →
- The tower of blocks began to wobble. tree →
note
Past form: wobbled. Adjective: wobbly (wobblier, wobbliest). «Have a wobble» (British) means feel nervous or unsure for a moment. Safety: never climb on wobbly furniture.
In the corpora
- Vibrato is a controlled wobble in the voice that singers use on purpose, different from a nervous shake.
- A plane flying over or a camera wobble can mean another take, so many takes do not mean bad acting.
- In a solid like a wooden block the particles are locked in place and only wobble, so it keeps its shape.
- A solid keeps its own shape because its particles are held in fixed places and only wobble.
- Dad builds a bookcase without reading the instructions, and it wobbles.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «wobble» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.