How do you use the word "cover" in a sentence?

Here are real-life examples of using "cover": Will this cover the holiday expenses? Cover your mouth when you cough, sneeze, or yawn.

Cover Meaning

/ˈkʌvɚ/

Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

Definition

nounA lid.

nounArea or situation which screens a person or thing from view.

Sentence Examples

Will this cover the holiday expenses?

Cover your mouth when you cough, sneeze, or yawn.

Cover the chicken loosely with foil.

Synonyms & Antonyms

Synonyms:

blanket continue screen

Antonyms:

uncover

Vocabulary Challenge

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CEFR Practice Quiz

Please ____ the pot with a lid to keep the soup hot.

Word Origin & History

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Latin con- Proto-Indo-European *h₁ep-der. Proto-Indo-European *h₁épsder. Proto-Indo-European *h₁epi Proto-Indo-European *h₂wer- Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Latin operiō Latin cooperiō Old French covrirbor. Middle English coveren English cover From Middle English coveren, borrowed from Old French covrir, cueuvrir (modern French couvrir), from Late Latin coperire, from Latin cooperiō (“to cover completely”), from co- (intensive prefix) + operiō (“to close, cover”). Displaced native Middle English thecchen and bethecchen (“to cover”) (from Old English þeccan, beþeccan (“to cover”)), Middle English helen, (over)helen, (for)helen (“to cover, conceal”) (from Old English helan (“to conceal, cover, hide”)), Middle English wrien, (be)wreon (“to cover”) (from Old English (be)wrēon (“to cover”)), Middle English hodren, hothren (“to cover up”) (from Low German hudren (“to cover up”)). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the original sense of the verb and noun cover was “hide from view” as in its cognate covert. Except in the limited sense of “cover again”, the word recover is unrelated and is cognate with recuperate. Cognate with Spanish cubrir and Portuguese cobrir.

Literary Quotations & Historical Citations

"When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me." — 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

"A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor; as, again, the arm-chair in which Bunting now sat forward, staring into the dull, small fire." — 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0016:

"Similar studies of rats have employed four different intracranial resorbable, slow sustained release systems—[…]. Such a slow-release device containing angiogenic factors could be placed on the pia mater covering the cerebral cortex and tested in persons with senile dementia in long term studies." — 2013 May-June, Charles T. Ambrose, “Alzheimer’s Disease”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 200:

"All the while he held his hat in his hand; and even until he had given his answer, when he covered and bade us be." — 1904, Rawdon Lubbock Brown, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts:

"the powers that covered themselves with everlasting infamy by the partition of Poland" — 1842, Henry Brougham, Political Philosophy:

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