Great Wall
16
3.5
- proper noun
:
Gran Muralla China
- Approaching the Great Wall in scale, the dikes stretch more than 400 miles across the North China Plain.
- the Great Wall of China
- walk the Great Wall
I've gone to, you know, Grand Teton National Park, I've gone to North Korea, I've gone to Hawaii, I've gone to the Great Wall of China.
- I've gone to, you know, Grand Teton National Park, I've gone to North Korea, I've gone to Hawaii, I've gone to the Great Wall of China.
Examples
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The Great Wall has stood for centuries as one of mankind's most enduring wonders.
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In what country is the Great Wall of China?
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We're going to explore because it took us three days to get to the Great Wall, so we're going to have fun.
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we have arrived at the Great Wall
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Then what is the purpose of the Great Wall?
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Newly accessible areas of the Great Wall of China are marked in blue.
Blog text (16) -
Most travelers whiz along the highway in order to reach the Great Wall of China.
Blog text (16) -
When I was twenty-three, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro; two years ago, I walked along the Great Wall of China.
Fiction book (1993) -
The Great Wall of China is 2500 miles long, too tall to climb, too thick to knock down, too long to go around, and yet China was invaded 3 times, 3 times in the first 100 years of the Wall's existence.
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The Great Wall is an impressive feat of engineering that attracts millions of visitors each year.
Synonyms
8
3.0
A very long old wall in northern China built to stop attacks
1
3.4
A very long stone wall built across northern China to keep out attackers
Surface Forms
Morphology
The astronomical sense is a straightforward extension of 'great' (very large/significant) + 'wall' (a dividing or vertical structure): it names a very large, wall-like arrangement of galaxies. This compositional, metaphorical but literalizable meaning is directly inferable by a B1 learner who knows both constituents and follows common noun-adjective composition patterns.
Etymology
Great Wall comes from the very long wall built to 'protect' northern China. Great means very big and Wall means a barrier, so the name helps you picture a huge defensive wall.