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# eel

«eel» in Mova's school dictionary: **a long, thin fish that looks like a snake and has…** — 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 (an eel, eels)

### meaning for a pupil

An eel is a long, thin fish that looks like a snake and has slippery skin. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#m1)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons on rivers and the sea, eels are fish with fins and gills, and some travel huge distances to breed; the electric eel can give an electric shock. «Slippery as an eel» describes someone hard to catch or pin down.

### examples

- An eel slid out from under the rock. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#x1)
- Eels look like snakes, but they are fish. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#x2)
- The electric eel can give a strong shock. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#x3)
- The fisherman caught an eel in the river. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#x4)
- The puppy was as slippery as an eel in the bath. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#x5)
- Some eels swim across the ocean to lay their eggs. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#x6)
- Moray eels hide in holes in the reef. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/E/eel/#x7)

### note

Countable: an eel, two eels. Starts with a vowel sound, so «an eel». Trap: eels are fish, not snakes or worms. The electric eel is not actually a true eel but a kind of knifefish.

### In the corpora

- [Anglerfish and gulper eels can swallow prey as big as themselves or bigger, because their mouths open very wide and their stomachs stretch.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/176-the-deep-dark-anglerfish-giant-squid-blobfish-and-whale-falls/5/)
- [While the Rat and the Otter argue about eels by the fire, the Badger takes the Mole on a tour with a lantern.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/40-willows-ch4-part4-the-city-under-the-wood/0/)
- [Ils ont (they have) sounds "eel-ZON"; ils sont (they are) sounds "eel SON".](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/29-avoir-to-have/6/)
- [Many French endings are written but not said: "ils parlent" (they speak) sounds like "eel parl".](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/35-french-compared-with-english/10/)
- [Electric eels are not true eels but a kind of knifefish.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/myths/11-animals-in-the-sea-and-the-river/16/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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