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Polysemy (/ p ə ˈ l ɪ s ɪ m i / or / ˈ p ɒ l ɪ ˌ s iː m i /; [1] [2] from Ancient Greek πολύ-(polý-) 'many' and σῆμα (sêma) 'sign') is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. [3]
Similarly, a river bank, a savings bank, a bank of switches, and a bank shot in the game of pool share a common spelling and pronunciation, but differ in meaning. The words bow and bough are examples where there are two meanings associated with a single pronunciation and spelling (the weapon and the knot); two meanings with two different ...
Portmanteau: a new word that fuses two words or morphemes; Retronym: creating a new word to denote an old object or concept whose original name has come to be used for something else; Oxymoron: a combination of two contradictory terms; Zeugma and Syllepsis: the use of a single phrase in two ways simultaneously; Pun: deliberately mixing two ...
large bottle of spirits ("a half of bourbon"), traditionally 1/2 of a US gallon, now the metric near-equivalent of 1750 mL; also "handle" as such large bottles often have a handle halfway house: a place where victims of child abuse, orphans or teenage runaways can stay, a shelter drug rehabilitation or sex offender centre.
Heterosemy contrasts with polysemy: while heterosemy implies two distinct words with the same form, polysemy implies one word with multiple meanings. For example, the word hard has the related meanings "solid" (as in a hard surface) and "difficult" (as in a hard question), but since the word is used as an adjective in both cases, it is an ...
Word British English meanings Meanings common to British and American English American English meanings saloon closed car having two or (usu.) four doors, a front and rear seat and a separate boot/trunk (US: sedan) (saloon bar) posh bar within a pub or hotel passengers' lounge on a liner or luxury train (US approx.: parlor car)
By replacing "na hoře" by "nahoře", one obtains 5 more meanings. If separating words using spaces is also permitted, the total number of known possible meanings rises to 58. [38] Czech has the syllabic consonants [r] and [l], which can stand in for vowels.
In Japanese, a holophrastic or single-word sentence is meant to carry the least amount of information as syntactically possible, while intonation becomes the primary carrier of meaning. [16] For example, a person saying the Japanese word e.g. "はい" (/haɪ/) = 'yes' on a high level pitch would command attention.