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For example, a word can have several word senses. [3] Polysemy is distinct from monosemy, where a word has a single meaning. [3] Polysemy is distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two or more words (such as bear the animal, and the verb bear); whereas homonymy is a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy ...
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. A well-known example of a sentence that does not contain a vowel is Strč prst skrz krk, meaning "stick your finger through the neck."
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word cleave can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind together". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [1] [2] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
This list of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names is intended to help those unfamiliar with classical languages to understand and remember the scientific names of organisms. The binomial nomenclature used for animals and plants is largely derived from Latin and Greek words, as are some of the names used for higher taxa , such ...
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 ...
The higher the number of synonyms a word has, the higher the degree of ambiguity. [1] Like other kinds of ambiguity , semantic ambiguities are often clarified by context or by prosody . One's comprehension of a sentence in which a semantically ambiguous word is used is strongly influenced by the general structure of the sentence. [ 2 ]
Monosemy as a methodology for analysis is based on the recognition that almost all cases of polysemy (where a word is understood to have multiple meanings) require context in order to differentiate these supposed meanings.
In the process of encoding, the sender (i.e. encoder) uses verbal (e.g. words, signs, images, video) and non-verbal (e.g. body language, hand gestures, face expressions) symbols for which he or she believes the receiver (that is, the decoder) will understand. The symbols can be words and numbers, images, face expressions, signals and/or actions.