Word that has more than one meaning example

Learning English can be fun. It can be daunting. It can be empowering. It can also be confusing, on occasion. But one thing it definitely isn’t is boring. Even the most fluent English speakers are often surprised when they discover something new about the language: a grammar rule brought to their attention for the first time, a word that they’d never come across before or, even more surprisingly, a familiar word used in an unexpected way! Yes, it is quite common for one English word to have two (or more) completely different meanings.

The way to tell these same-spelling, different-meaning words apart is to pay attention to the context in which they are being used. This will make much more sense when we see these words in action, so let’s look at some examples.

Here is a word that has more than one meaning:

Mine

• as a noun: a place underground from where minerals are extracted
  Peter has been working at a coal mine since April.
• as a possessive pronoun: to show possession
  This is your bag, not mine.

Isn’t that interesting? The same word—mine—is used in both example sentences, but it means two entirely different things in each.

Here is a list of ten other English words with more than one meaning:

1. Interest

• as a noun: wanting to learn or know more about something
  She developed an interest in programming after taking a course in college and now she is a
  professional programmer.
• as a noun: additional money charged on a borrowed sum
  I am paying a high rate of interest on my home loan.
• as a verb: to arouse curiosity or attention
  We built interest in our product by outlining its many benefits on our social media channels.

2. Date

• as a noun: the day of the month or year
  We still haven’t set a date for the ceremony.
• as a verb: to show the age of something
  This food at this restaurant is delicious but the old-fashioned décor really dates it.

3. Engage

• as a verb: to be involved in some work or an activity
  The students hope to engage in a lively discussion with the visiting professor.
• as an adjective: to have formally agreed to marry someone
  The engaged couple shared the good news with their friends and family.

4. Leave

• as a verb: to go away from somewhere
  Ali leaves for Delhi soon.
• as a verb: to remain
  The ink will leave a stain on my shirt.
• as a verb: to deposit or deliver
  The delivery person leaves Sharmila’s parcels with her neighbor.
• as a noun: to be absent from work or duty
  Gunjan is at home on leave today. She will not be attending the meeting.

5. Novel

• as a noun: a prose, fictionalized narrative in the form of a book that often tells a complex
  story with characters and action
  My mother’s novel about three generations of women from a small town has won the National Book Award this year.
• as an adjective: something that is unique and interesting
  I discovered a novel way to spend less money and save more

6. Park

• as a noun: a public garden or area for recreation
  I am taking my children to play in the park today.
• as a verb: to bring a car or vehicle to a stop for a period of time
  We are leaving for the concert now so that we get a good spot to park the car.

7. Play

• as a verb: to engage in an activity or sport
  We are going to play football today.
  My band is playing at the City Club on Saturday. Why don’t you come check us out?
• as a verb: to act in a dramatic production
  I am playing the role of a politician in my next film.
• as a noun: a theatrical production
  Hamlet is my favorite play of all time.

8. Right

• as an adjective: morally fair, good or proper
  The right thing to do now would be to apologize for your mistake.
• as a noun: morally right or just.
  He doesn’t seem to understand the difference between right and wrong.
• as a noun: something one has legal or moral claim to
  As a citizen of this country I have voting rights.
• as a noun: the direction or location of something
  If you look to your right, you will see the Museum of Natural History.

9. Run

• as a verb: to move faster than while walking
  Don’t run down the street, that’s dangerous!
• as a verb: to go somewhere in urgency or distress (not literally “running”, necessarily)
  Even as an adult, I run to my mother with all my problems.
• as a verb: to contend in a race of some kind
  I intend to run for President four years from now.
• as a noun: a continuous spell of a something
  Souvik has a had a run of bad luck this year.

10. Type

• as a noun: a category of things or people that share something in common
  They sell all types of fabric in that store.
• as a verb: to write something on a keypad by pressing keys
  Wow! You type very fast!

Now that’s a lot of different meanings for only a few words, isn’t it? And if you’ll believe it – many of these words can be used in even more ways than the ones listed here. But don’t be overwhelmed, a good online or print dictionary will help you find all the meanings of any English word you might encounter. And the more you read and speak in English, the stronger your vocabulary will become.

Here’s another great idea – to really power up your vocabulary try a Burlington English course! We have expert teachers on hand to guide you with our spoken English training courses that will take your language learning journey to the next level.

This article was formerly combined with another on sorting words into associated groups. To read the information on that topic, you can now look at our new article VR — Putting Words Into Groups.

There are many words in English which have more than one meaning. Here are some examples:

Bolt – To run quickly; or a metal fastener.

Jam – A fruit preserve; a queue of traffic; the act of forcing something into place.

Mine – A kind of bomb; a place where minerals are dug up (or the act of digging them up); or belonging to me.

You get the idea. This part of the exam is designed to test your child’s vocabulary. It relies on a candidate’s ability to recognise the different meanings which some words have, and to come up with a suitable synonym.

How Are These Kind Of Questions Posed In The Exam?

There are two ways that this question can be posed – with multiple-choice answers or without. Both forms are presented in the same way though.

Firstly, and more straightforwardly, let’s look at the multiple-choice method. Seeing a list of possible answers should spark your child into finding the correct answer but as usual, there are techniques to add to your chance of success.

Example Question One

Possible answers:
a) SHREW
b) VIEW
c) ADVERT

d) SPOT

Remember that, as usual, there will be a deliberate effort to mislead the candidates. ‘Notice’ and ‘see’ are both verbs and nouns. This can affect their meaning, of course.

‘Mole’ has two different meanings — the animal is not related in any way to ‘blemish’ so we can assume it’s meant as the skin mark.

With a shortlist of four or five words, simply run them through and see if you can connect them with at least one word on each side.

SHREW goes with MOLE, but not with any of the other words.

VIEW is a match for SEE, and possibly for NOTICE, but it does not go with either BLEMISH or MOLE, so can be discounted.

ADVERT goes only with NOTICE, so that is not the correct answer.

SPOT is a match for all four of the given words, so must be the correct answer.

If you don’t know the meaning of a word, don’t worry — the answer should be a word that’s relatively well-known, even if the words in brackets are not. As long as you’ve got a match to a word in each pair of brackets you should be fairly safe.

Example Question Two

(NOTICE SEE) __________ (BLEMISH MOLE)

If there is no multiple choice answer available, then start with the most clear-cut word in brackets. Let’s go for ‘blemish’ as it’s got a meaning that is more distinct than the others.

If your child knows the word (it’s the level that they certainly should) then they can picture it in their mind. What is it? What does it look like? Write down a few synonyms for it if possible. Even without this list, a clear picture of a ‘blemish’ on a person’s skin, or on an apple’s peel, should lead them to think of ‘mole’ in the sense of a skin blemish.

If they have a few words in their heads, relate them to ‘notice’ and ‘see’ and find whether they work. If not, try and find synonyms for the latter two. Remember, words can often be nouns or verbs depending on context. Although the word you’re looking for is a verb to match those in the first set of brackets, it’s a noun to match the second. The answer, of course, is ‘SPOT’.

Sample Tests

Now that you have seen how these sorts of questions appear (and how to work out the answers), it’s time to practise.

We have four quizzes on Words with Multiple Meanings in the Eleven Plus Verbal Reasoning section of our site. Go through them with your child and share with them the technique we have learned in this lesson. Here are links to the four quizzes for your convenience:

Words with Multiple Meanings 1

Words with Multiple Meanings 2

Words with Multiple Meanings 3

Words with Multiple Meanings 4

In addition, you might ask your child to write a question or two — use words like ‘earth’, ‘flag’ or ‘tie’. The more they practise setting questions, the more they are ready to answer them! Good luck!

What are polysemous words? Is it easy to understand someone if they say ‘did you get the bat?’ Polysemy refers to a single word with more than one meaning. The multiple meanings are listed under one entry in a dictionary. An example of polysemy is the word dish. If we took a look at the dictionary we see that dish has multiple definitions, or polysemous meanings, under one entry:

• It’s your turn to wash the dishes = a kind of plate.
• How long does it take to cook this dish? = a meal.

Wing (noun)

The term polysemy, or polysemous words, comes from the Greek words poly and sēma which together mean ‘many signs’. The opposite of polysemy is monosemy. Monosemy is when one word has only one meaning.

Polysemy is related to homonymy (one word that has multiple meanings but is pronounced and/or spelt the same). Additionally, because polysemous words have more than one meaning, they can cause lexical ambiguity. This can happen when someone hears/reads something without the same frame of reference or contextual information as the speaker/writer. For example, ‘Let’s go to the bank!’ isn’t clear. Does this mean ‘a river bank’ or ‘a financial institution’?

1. He has served his time in prison.
2. The free food is served to homeless people only.
3. This old bike has served me well.
4. The new mall will serve the community well.
5. My mom served in the medical corps.

All five sentences use the same verb serve. Although each sentence carries a different sense of serve, they all imply the same meaning of ‘giving service’:

1. He has served his time in prison → spend some time (in prison).
2. The free food is served for homeless people only → provide.
3. This old bike has served me well → be useful.
4. The new mall will serve the community well → provide.
5. My mom serves in the medical corps → work as.

Serve is then a very good example of polysemous words. Some other examples of polysemy include:

• Verb: get — receive, bring, move/travel.
• Noun: bank — of a river/canal, a place to deposit money, a slope.
• Adjective: light — colours, not heavy, not serious.

Polysemy examples in literature

How can we analyse polysemic examples in literature? Take a look at this excerpt from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1623) (Act 5, Scene 3) below and analyze the polysemous meaning of the word gallery:

The word gallery has several different polysemous meanings:

1. A long corridor to exhibit works of art in Elizabethan and Jacobean houses.
2. (In a theatre) the highest of such projecting platforms, containing the cheapest seats.
3. A crypt or a catacomb.

• Refers to a word with multiple meanings.
• Are listed under a single dictionary entry.
• Must stem from the same word class, eg noun-noun: mouse (an animal — computer device), wings (parts of birds for flying — part of a building), beam (a line of light — a piece of wood).

Homonymic words

• Refers to words with different meanings but with the same pronunciation and/or spelling.
• Are listed under multiple dictionary entries.
• Can be verb-noun combination: to address — an address, to rock — a rock, to park — a park.

Polysemy vs. homonymy

What is the difference between polysemic words and homonymy? Take the word address.

First, analyse the multiple meanings and word class. Address has two meanings and two different word classes:

Second, if the words have multiple forms (multiple entries in a dictionary), eg a verb and noun, they are homonyms. If the two words stem from a single form (one entry in a dictionary), eg a verb or noun, they are polysemies. The word address has two word forms: a verb and a noun. This proves that address is a homonym.

To explain the difference between polysemous words and hyponymic expressions, let’s take the word mouse.

Polysemy describes one word with more than one meaning.

Because the word mouse has multiple meanings it can cause lexical ambiguity: «Do you mean the animal mouse or the computer device?» Hyponymy describes a super and subordinate relationship between words.

Through our examples of polysemy, we see that a house mouse and a field mouse aren’t the two different meanings of a mouse. Both types of the singular mouse refer to one thing, the animal.

From the perspective of hyponymy, the mouse that is the computer device isn’t a kind of the animal mouse. It is a mouse (the connotative meaning of mouse = polysemy).

Bring me the mouse!

¹ A. Sabatier, Shakespeare and Visual Culture, (2016).