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# illustrate

«illustrate» in Mova's school dictionary: **To draw or add pictures to a book, article or story** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

verb (illustrate, illustrates, illustrated, illustrating)

### meaning for a pupil

1) To draw or add pictures to a book, article or story. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#m1)

2) To explain or show something by using examples, diagrams or pictures. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#m2)

3) To be an example that shows something is true. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In English and art lessons pupils illustrate their stories. In maths and science they illustrate an answer with a diagram or graph. In formal writing: «This graph illustrates the rise in temperature.» Phrases: illustrate with, illustrated book, to illustrate the point.

### examples

- Illustrate your story with a picture. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x1)
- This book was illustrated by a famous artist. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x2)
- Use a bar chart to illustrate your results. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x3)
- Let me illustrate with an example. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x4)
- The broken vase illustrates why we don't play ball inside. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x5)
- Draw a diagram to illustrate the water cycle. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x6)
- The pictures illustrate each step of the recipe. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x7)
- The following story will signally illustrate how ready she was to resent any slight offered to her. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/I/illustrate/#x8)

### note

Regular verb. Person: illustrator; noun: illustration. Stress on the first syllable in the UK («ILL-us-trate»). In maths, «illustrate» asks you to show working with a drawing, not only words.

### Trees and pragmatics

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