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# centipede

«centipede» in Mova's school dictionary: **a small long thin creature with a flat body divided into…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a centipede, centipedes)

### meaning for a pupil

A centipede is a small long thin creature with a flat body divided into many parts, each with one pair of legs. It is fast, lives in dark damp places and hunts insects. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#m1)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons, centipedes are arthropods but not insects (insects have 6 legs). They live under logs and stones in minibeast hunts. They have poison claws to catch prey, and big tropical ones can give a painful bite. Compared with millipedes: centipedes have one pair of legs per body part, are fast hunters; millipedes have two pairs per part, are slow and eat dead plants.

### examples

- A centipede ran out from under the log. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x1)
- Centipedes hunt insects and spiders. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x2)
- A centipede has one pair of legs on each body part. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x3)
- «Centi» means a hundred, but most centipedes don't have exactly 100 legs. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x4)
- We found a centipede during our minibeast hunt. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x5)
- Big centipedes can bite, so don't pick them up. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x6)
- Centipedes like dark, damp places. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x7)
- Is it a centipede or a millipede? Count the legs on each section. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x8)
- The centipede was invulnerable to weapons! [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/centipede/#x9)

### note

Countable. «Centi-» = hundred (as in centimetre, century), «-pede» = foot. Maths trap: centipedes always have an odd number of pairs of legs (15, 21, 23…), so never exactly 100 legs (50 pairs). Myth: millipedes do not have 1,000 legs (most have far fewer).

### In the corpora

- [Centipedes always have an odd number of pairs of legs, so no centipede has exactly 100 legs.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/15/)
- [Centipedes are fast hunters with one pair of legs on each body segment and venom claws to catch insects.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/220-spiders-and-other-minibeasts-under-logs-and-stones/12/)
- [Despite their name, no centipede has exactly one hundred legs, and most millipedes have far fewer than a thousand.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/220-spiders-and-other-minibeasts-under-logs-and-stones/17/)
- [Millipedes have two pairs of legs on most body sections and centipedes have one pair, which is how you tell them apart.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/365-tiny-champions-the-strongest-beetle-the-highest-jumping-flea-and-the-leggiest-millipede/11/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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