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# plankton

«plankton» in Mova's school dictionary: **tiny plants and animals that drift in the sea and in…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (plankton — uncountable)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Plankton are tiny plants and animals that drift in the sea and in lakes, carried by the water; most are too small to see without a microscope. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#m1)

2) Plant plankton (phytoplankton) make food from sunlight and produce a large share of the oxygen we breathe; animal plankton (zooplankton) include tiny shrimps and baby fish. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In science lessons plankton come at the start of ocean food chains: plankton are eaten by small fish and krill, which are eaten by bigger fish, seals and penguins — and the biggest animal of all, the blue whale, eats mostly tiny krill. In environment lessons pupils learn that warming and polluted seas harm plankton. In a famous cartoon, Plankton is a tiny villain.

### examples

- Plankton float in the ocean. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#x1)
- Many whales feed on tiny plankton and krill. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#x2)
- Plankton are at the bottom of the ocean food chain. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#x3)
- Phytoplankton make oxygen from sunlight. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#x4)
- We looked at plankton under the microscope. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#x5)
- The sea glowed at night because of special plankton. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#x6)
- Small fish eat plankton, and bigger fish eat the small fish. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/plankton/#x7)

### note

Uncountable in everyday use: «plankton», not «a plankton»; it can take a plural verb («plankton are») or singular («plankton is»). Plankton are not one species but many tiny living things. The word comes from Greek for «drifting».

### In the corpora

- [Whale poo spreads nutrients that feed plankton, and plankton makes much of Earth's oxygen.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/26-whales/17/)
- [One drop of seawater can hold millions of viruses and bacteria and many plankton.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/259-the-microscopic-world-tardigrades-mites-plankton-and-other-tiny-creatures/18/)
- [Oil and gas come from tiny sea plankton buried in mud and slowly cooked by the heat underground.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/59-coal-oil-and-gas/4/)
- [Oil and gas formed from tiny sea plankton buried in mud and cooked slowly underground.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/59-coal-oil-and-gas/10/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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