Definition
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 specializedvocabulary dealing with technical topics" (The Handbook of Linguistics, 2003).
According to some estimates, more than 40% of English words have more than one meaning. The fact that so many words (or lexemes) are polysemous "shows that semantic changesoften add meanings to the language without subtracting any" (M. Lynne Murphy, Lexical Meaning, 2010).
For a discussion of the similarities and differences between polysemy and homonymy, see the entry for homonymy.
Examples and Observations
- "The word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."
(G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1909)
Banks, Pupils, and Bats
Sports Illustrated can be bought for 1 dollar or 35 million dollars; the first is something you can read and later start a fire with, the second is a particular company that produces the magazine you just read. Such polysemy can give rise to a special ambiguity (He left the bank five minutes ago, He left the bank five years ago). Sometimes dictionaries use history to decide whether a particular entry is a case of one word with two related meanings, or two separate words, but this can be tricky. Even though pupil(eye) and pupil (student) are historically linked, they are intuitively as unrelated as bat (implement) and bat (animal)."
(Adrian Akmajian, et al., Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. MIT Press, 2001)
Sports Illustrated can be bought for 1 dollar or 35 million dollars; the first is something you can read and later start a fire with, the second is a particular company that produces the magazine you just read. Such polysemy can give rise to a special ambiguity (He left the bank five minutes ago, He left the bank five years ago). Sometimes dictionaries use history to decide whether a particular entry is a case of one word with two related meanings, or two separate words, but this can be tricky. Even though pupil(eye) and pupil (student) are historically linked, they are intuitively as unrelated as bat (implement) and bat (animal)."
(Adrian Akmajian, et al., Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication. MIT Press, 2001)
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