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# piston

«piston» in Mova's school dictionary: **a short solid cylinder that moves up and down or in and…** — 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 piston, pistons)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A piston is a short solid cylinder that moves up and down or in and out inside a tube, pushed by pressure; it is a key part of engines and pumps. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#m1)

2) (informal) «Like pistons» describes something moving fast up and down, like legs running. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In science and D&T (design and technology) lessons, pistons show how pressure and force make movement: in car engines, burning fuel pushes pistons, which turn the wheels; in syringes and bike pumps, a piston pushes air or liquid. Children make simple hydraulic models with syringes.

### examples

- The piston moves up and down inside the engine. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x1)
- A bike pump has a piston inside. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x2)
- Pistons turn the crankshaft in a car. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x3)
- We made a moving arm with syringes as pistons. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x4)
- Steam pushed the pistons of the old train. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x5)
- His legs went like pistons as he raced to the finish. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x6)
- A syringe is a simple piston and cylinder. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x7)
- The huge limbs moved as steadily as pistons, eight feet to each stride, and the wrinkled skin of the elbow points rustled. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/piston/#x8)

### note

Countable: pistons. Not to be confused with «pistol» (a gun). Pronounced «PISS-tun».

### In the corpora

- [Steam engines burned coal to boil water, and the steam pushed pistons that powered factories, trains and ships.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/30-the-industrial-revolution/7/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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