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# centimetre

«centimetre» in Mova's school dictionary: **the British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian…** — 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 (centimetre, centimetres; cm — British spelling)

### meaning for a pupil

Centimetre is the British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian way to spell centimeter, a small unit of length about the width of a fingernail. 100 centimetres make 1 metre. A metre is 100 centimetres. A centimetre is 10 millimetres. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#m1)

### sense in the lessons

a unit of length for lines, sides of shapes and small objects; school rulers show centimetres; phrases «square centimetres» (cm²), «cubic centimetres» (cm³)

### examples

- The worm is 6 centimetres long. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x1)
- A rectangle is 8 centimetres by 3 centimetres. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x2)
- 1 metre is 100 centimetres. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x3)
- The tower is 25 centimetres tall. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x4)
- Draw a line 12 centimetres long. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x5)
- My hand is about 15 centimetres long. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x6)
- The seedling grew 2 centimetres in a week. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x7)
- Rain: 3 centimetres fell overnight. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x8)
- The shoebox is 30 centimetres long. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x9)
- Each square on the grid is one square centimetre. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centimetre/#x10)

### note

A unit, not a thing counted. Trap: square centimetres measure area, centimetres measure length. Same meaning as «centimeter»; only the spelling differs (-re in Britain, -er in the USA). Short form «cm».

### In the corpora

- [The Mona Lisa is about 77 centimetres tall and 53 centimetres wide; Guernica is almost 8 metres wide.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/42-olympiad-picture-puzzles/12/)
- [Aquarium tunnels are made of acrylic many centimetres thick, strong enough to hold back millions of litres of water.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/91-the-aquarium-the-shark-tunnel-and-the-rays/5/)
- [Millions of years ago, when the air held more oxygen, some dragonfly relatives had wings about 70 centimetres across.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/15/)
- [A giraffe's dark tongue is about 45 to 50 centimetres long and pulls leaves past the thorns of acacia trees.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/128-madagascar-real-zebras-hippos-and-giraffes/15/)
- [An ostrich's eye is about 5 centimetres across, the biggest of any land animal and bigger than its own brain.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/151-ostriches-and-heads-in-the-sand/11/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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