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# decoy

«decoy» in Mova's school dictionary: **a person or thing used to trick someone and lead them…** — 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 (a decoy, decoys); verb (decoy, decoys, decoyed, decoying)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A decoy is a person or thing used to trick someone and lead them away or into a trap. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#m1)

2) A decoy is a model of a bird, such as a wooden duck, used by hunters to attract real birds. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#m2)

3) To decoy someone is to trick them in this way. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In stories, games and war history, decoys distract enemies: fake tanks, dummy soldiers. In nature, some animals act as decoys (a bird pretends to have a broken wing to lead a fox away from its nest). In sport, a decoy runner draws defenders away.

### examples

- The duck decoy floated on the pond. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#x1)
- The army used inflatable tanks as decoys. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#x2)
- One friend acted as a decoy while the others hid the present. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#x3)
- The mother bird pretended to be hurt as a decoy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#x4)
- The striker made a decoy run to draw the defender. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#x5)
- The spy was decoyed into a trap. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#x6)
- The bird-trap was quite empty, as he had caught nothing, and he had to kill a pied Partridge, which he had tamed for a decoy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/decoy/#x7)

### note

Countable: decoys. Regular verb: decoyed. Pronounced «DEE-koy» (noun), «dih-KOY» (verb, sometimes).

### In the corpora

- [Octopuses and squid squirt dark ink and jet away, and some squid make an ink blob shaped like themselves as a decoy.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/53-how-animals-defend-themselves/11/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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