polysemy
07.36
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
specialized dealing with vocabulary 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 taxonimy. 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
atentiation
2. the building
where a financial institution offers services
3. a synonymy
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 homonymy to
1 and 2, as they do not share etymologies. It is a completely different
meaning. 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
http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/polysemyterm.htm
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