polysemy

Polysemy is the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings. A polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple meanings. Adjective: polysemous or polysemic.
In contrast, a one-to-one match between a word and a meaning is called monosemy. According to William Croft, "Monosemy is probably most clearly found in specialized vocabulary dealing with technical topics" (The Handbook of Linguistics, 2003).


 

 

Examples

Man
  1. The human species (i.e., man vs. animal)
  2. Males of the human species (i.e., man vs. woman)
  3. Adult males of the human species (i.e., man vs. boy)
This example shows the specific polysemy where the same word is used at different levels of a taxonomy. Example 1 contains 2, and 2 contains 3.
Mole
  1. a small burrowing mammal
  2. consequently, there are several different entities called moles (see the Mole disambiguation page). Although these refer to different things, their names derive from 1. :e.g. A Mole burrows for information hoping to go undetected.
Bank
  1. a financial institution
  2. the building where a financial institution offers services
  3. a synonym for 'rely upon' (e.g. "I'm your friend, you can bank on me"). It is different, but related, as it derives from the theme of security initiated by 1.
However: a river bank is a homonym to 1 and 2, as they do not share etymologies. It is a completely different meaning.[15] River bed, though, is polysemous with the beds on which people sleep.
Book
  1. a bound collection of pages
  2. a text reproduced and distributed (thus, someone who has read the same text on a computer has read the same book as someone who had the actual paper volume)
  3. to make an action or event a matter of record (e.g. "Unable to book a hotel room, a man sneaked into a nearby private residence where police arrested him and later booked him for unlawful entry.")
Newspaper
  1. a company that publishes written news.
  2. a single physical item published by the company.
  3. the newspaper as an edited work in a specific format (e.g. "They changed the layout of the newspaper's front page").
The different meanings can be combined in a single sentence, e.g. "John used to work for the newspaper that you are reading."
Milk
The verb milk (e.g. "he's milking it for all he can get") derives from the process of obtaining milk.
Wood
  1. a piece of a tree
  2. a geographical area with many trees
Crane
  1. a bird
  2. a type of construction equipment
  3. to strain out one's neck
references : http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/polysemyterm.htm
                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy








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