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# van

«van» in Mova's school dictionary: **a vehicle bigger than a car and smaller than a truck…** — 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 (van, vans)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A van is a vehicle bigger than a car and smaller than a truck, used for carrying people or goods. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#m1)

2) A van with seats can carry a group, like a school team; a van with no back seats carries boxes, tools or furniture. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#m2)

3) «In the van» or «in the vanguard» can also mean at the front of a march or a change (rare). [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In school maths: a carrier with seats or a load; seats per van is a rate and the question asks how many vans are needed for a group. In everyday life: delivery vans bring parcels, an ice-cream van plays music in the street, a camper van is for holidays, a moving van carries furniture to a new home. Phrases: «a delivery van», «a camper van», «a moving van», «by van».

### examples

- Each van holds 8 people. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x1)
- 3 vans carry 45 boxes. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x2)
- How many vans are needed for 30 children? [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x3)
- The van drove 60 miles. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x4)
- The delivery van brought our new fridge. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x5)
- We heard the ice-cream van playing its tune. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x6)
- Dad hired a moving van to take our beds to the new house. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x7)
- The football team travelled to the match in two vans. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x8)
- They placed straw round the coffin, and the van drove away. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/V/van/#x9)

### note

Plural «vans». Countable: «a van». A van is not a car and not a truck — in between. Maths: seats per van is a rate; vans needed = people ÷ seats, rounded up, because a few leftover children still need one more van. Safety: never get into a stranger's van.

### In the corpora

- [Usually the facts are small and boring: a car, a van, an ambulance, a police car for twenty minutes.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/adult-life/41-our-street-who-parked-where-and-who-won-what/12/)
- [Van Gogh painted his own versions of prints by the Japanese artist Hiroshige to learn from them, and that influence changed his style.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/35-copying-vs-being-inspired-tracing-covers-giving-credit/13/)
- [Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first saw tiny living things in water, which he called «animalcules», with homemade lenses in the 1670s.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/256-the-microscopic-world-cells-the-building-blocks-of-life/5/)
- [It turned out he had driven a delivery van for thirty years and «knew how corners work».](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/425-family-game-night/2/)
- [Jacob's mum in Leeds told him the ice-cream van plays its music when it has run out of ice cream.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/443-grown-ups-little-lies-the-ice-cream-van/0/)

### Trees and pragmatics

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