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# meal

«meal» in Mova's school dictionary: **the food you eat at one time, such as breakfast, lunch or…** — 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 (a meal, meals); noun (meal, uncountable — roughly ground grain, as in oatmeal)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A meal is the food you eat at one time, such as breakfast, lunch or dinner. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#m1)

2) A meal is also the time when you eat this food. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#m2)

3) Meal (uncountable) is grain ground into a rough powder, like oatmeal or cornmeal. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In health lessons eating regular, balanced meals (with vegetables, fruit, grains and protein) gives energy all day. In everyday life families share meals; names for meals differ: lunch or dinner at midday, dinner, tea or supper in the evening. In maths problems meals are counted: three meals a day for a week is 21 meals. Phrases: have a meal, a big meal, a hot meal, meal time, ready meal, make a meal of something (make it take too long).

### examples

- Breakfast is the first meal of the day. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x1)
- We had a lovely meal at Grandma's house. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x2)
- Wash your hands before every meal. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x3)
- Try to eat vegetables with every meal. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x4)
- Three meals a day for a week makes twenty-one meals. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x5)
- Dinner is my favourite meal. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x6)
- We cooked a meal for the family together. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x7)
- Don't eat lots of snacks just before a meal. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x8)
- Iktomi had no regular meal times. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/meal/#x9)

### note

Countable: a meal, meals. A snack is a small amount of food between meals, not a meal. Cornmeal and oatmeal are foods made from ground grain. «Make a meal of something» means take too long or make too much fuss.

### In the corpora

- [Much housework is invisible, like booking appointments and planning meals, so each grown-up may not see what the other does.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/12-cars-chores-and-the-shopping-list/14/)
- [Families make phone rules so meals are for talking, and adults find them hard to keep because phones are built to grab attention.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/29-screens-diets-sofas-and-late-nights/5/)
- [The whole journey of a meal through the gut usually takes about one to three days.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/17/)
- [Snakes are cold-blooded, so they need far less food than mammals; a big python can go months without a meal.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/87-reptile-house-snakes/4/)
- [Zoo kitchens prepare hundreds of meals a day, and nutritionists plan the right mix of food for each kind of animal.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/111-feeding-times-and-the-zoo-kitchen/4/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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