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# amoeba

«amoeba» in Mova's school dictionary: **A tiny living thing made of just one cell, which you can…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (an amoeba, amoebas or amoebae; US also ameba)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A tiny living thing made of just one cell, which you can only see with a microscope. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#m1)

2) It has no fixed shape: it moves by pushing out parts of itself like fingers (called pseudopods) and eats by wrapping round its food. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons the amoeba is a classic example of a single-celled organism that lives in ponds, soil and water. Some kinds cause illness if dirty water is drunk, which is why we boil or clean water. In everyday talk «amoeba-like» means shapeless.

### examples

- Under the microscope the amoeba changed its shape. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#x1)
- An amoeba is made of just one cell. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#x2)
- The amoeba wrapped around a tiny bit of food. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#x3)
- Amoebae live in pond water. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#x4)
- We drew the amoeba with its little pseudopods. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#x5)
- Some amoebas can make people ill if they drink dirty water. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/#x6)

### note

Say «uh-MEE-buh». Two plurals: amoebas (everyday) and amoebae («uh-MEE-bee», science). US spelling ameba. It is not a bacterium and not an animal in the usual sense.

### In the corpora

- [An amoeba moves by flowing its inside forward into a bulge called a false foot, and it swallows food by flowing around it.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/256-the-microscopic-world-cells-the-building-blocks-of-life/17/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «amoeba» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/amoeba/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.