In his plenary paper, Tony Essien wrote that “The importance of mathematical examples […] cannot be overemphasised”. Tony’s paper opened my eyes to the significance of examples and of the complex practice of exemplifying in multilingual mathematics education in general, and in teacher education in particular. The triadic framework that Tony proposed captures exemplifying as illustrating concepts from the perspectives of (a) grasping the illustrated concept by discernment; (b) communicating about the illustration as a fundamental idea of teaching and learning; and (c) attending to the multilingual context (of pre-service teachers) in which the illustration is submerged.