Answer:
The children were at play, pretending to be knights with their tin foil lances.
Explanation:
The word play's definitions include:
1. <em>verb. </em>engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.
2. <em>verb. </em>take part in (a sport).
3. <em>noun.</em> activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, especially by children.
4. <em>noun. </em>the conducting of an athletic match or contest.
'I like to <u>play</u> soccer with my friends.'
In this sentence, 'play' is being used as taking part of a sport, which is definition 2. Now, all you need to do is take another definition and write a sentence with it used in a different context.
'The children were at play, pretending to be knights with their tin foil lances.'
The second part is to include context clues to help the reader determine which definition of 'play' is being used. I'm using the third definition in this sentence, but you can use a different one. I could just leave the sentence without the dependent clause, 'The children were at play.', but it leaves much unclear about what the children were doing. 'pretending to be knights with their tin foil lances.' is just clarification.
This helps the reader determine the correct definition. First, you can determine that play is being used as a noun because of the 'at' in front of it. 'The children were <u>at</u> play'. The dependent clause tells you what exactly the children are doing, pretending to be knights. Pretending is not a sport, so by the process of elimination, you can establish that the third definition is the correct one.
I hope this helps you!
