POLYSEMY
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 vocabulary
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 changes often add meanings to the language without
subtracting any" (M. Lynne Murphy, Lexical
Meaning, 2010).
Polysemy is became from two words, there are poly
“many” and sema “sign”. Polysemy is a word or phrase with multiple meanings. It
has association of one word with two or more distinct meanings. So, polysemy is
the phenomenon of having or being open to several or many meanings.
Examples of Polysemy:
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 taxonomy. 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
2.
the building where a financial institution offers
services
3.
a synonym 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 homonym 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.
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
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy)
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