zigzag

«zigzag» in Mova's school dictionary: a line that goes sharply one way and then sharply the… — 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 (a zigzag, zigzags); adjective (a zigzag line); verb (zigzag, zigzags, zigzagged, zigzagging); adverb (run zigzag)

meaning for a pupil

1) A zigzag is a line that goes sharply one way and then sharply the other way, again and again, like the letter Z or W. tree →

2) To zigzag is to move forward by turning from side to side, again and again. tree →

3) Zigzag describes anything shaped like that, such as a zigzag pattern. tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths and art it describes a line made of straight pieces joined at sharp corners. In everyday life paths zigzag up steep hills, and road markings in the UK are zigzag lines near crossings where cars must not park. In nature lightning and some snakes' patterns look zigzag. In stories a character zigzags to escape a chaser.

examples

• The path zigzags up the side of the mountain. tree →
• Draw a zigzag line across the top of your page. tree →
• The rabbit zigzagged across the field to get away from the fox. tree →
• Lightning made a bright zigzag in the sky. tree →
• Do not park on the zigzag lines by the school crossing. tree →
• Her dress had a red and white zigzag pattern. tree →
• The skier zigzagged down the slope. tree →
• Like a lightning flash the slender stem shot upwards in a zigzag line, the branches spreading around it like green gauze and banners. tree →

note

Past form doubles the g: zigzagged, zigzagging. Plural: zigzags. Can be written «zig-zag» too. A zigzag is made of straight lines with corners; a curvy line with no corners is a wavy line, not a zigzag.

In the corpora

• Picture a city garden at midnight: a fox trots past the bins and somewhere a rabbit freezes, then zigzags away.
• The skull has 22 bones: 8 around the brain and 14 in the face, joined by zigzag seams called sutures.
• At Mezhyrich in Ukraine, about 15,000 years ago, people built huts from mammoth bones, with jaws stacked in a neat zigzag.
• Mountain roads zigzag so they are longer but much less steep, and cars and walkers can climb without slipping or straining.
• A flat sheet of paper flops, but folded into a zigzag or rolled into a tube it can hold up a book.

Trees and pragmatics

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