Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun semantics The ability of words, signs and symbols to have multiple meanings.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the ambiguity of an individual word or phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the greedy habit some words have of taking more than one meaning for themselves.

    Erin McKean redefines the dictionary 2007

  • And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the greedy habit some words have of taking more than one meaning for themselves.

    Erin McKean redefines the dictionary 2007

  • And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the greedy habit some words have of taking more than one meaning for themselves.

    Erin McKean redefines the dictionary 2007

  • There's indeed some ambiguity hesitate to call it "polysemy" since it seems to be a historical development around "hair cloth/shirt", which I came across only days ago reading up on Thomas More.

    languagehat.com: MORE PYNCHONIAN VOCAB. 2005

  • Topics range from particular language and construction-specific problems such as the "polysemy" of modal verbs in relation to context-sensitive constructions, to general technical analyses and proposals, including proposals for formalizing contextual features in constructional representations.

    Uz-Translations : Linguistics : Contexts and Constructions (Constructional Approaches to Language) 2010

  • Price: 3,500,000 Euro ckolderup oh no, semantic polysemy! we've never had to deal with that before! csessums patched with rat stubble from a barber's dust pan cwaxler civil case Tiffany brought against eBay drothschild iT WAS A QUEER, SULTRY SUMMER, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York jessamyn Personally, I'm after the uncontrolled growth of pubic hair.

    Paste to Win! (A Twitter Contest) - Anil Dash 2008

  • I wonder how and why human languages seem to be so completely content with the wild and multifarious polysemy and ambiguity that afflicts them.

    Clarity GamesWithWords 2010

  • I wonder how and why human languages seem to be so completely content with the wild and multifarious polysemy and ambiguity that afflicts them.

    Archive 2010-05-01 GamesWithWords 2010

  • Here's my 2001 MA thesis on polysemy in advertising:

    My MA thesis Wordled... Jonathan 2008

  • This is the polysemy and metonymy among the terms Afghan, Pashtun (and its primary variant Pakhtun, and permutations of vowels in both constructs), and Pathan.

    Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier 2008

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