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. usually related by contiguity of meaning within a semantic field.
It is thus usually regarded as distinct from homonymy,
in which the multiple meanings of a word may be unconnected or unrelated.
A polyseme is a word or phrase with different,
but related senses. Since the test for polysemy is the vague concept of
relatedness, judgments of polysemy can be difficult to make. Because applying
pre-existing words to new situations is a natural process of language change,
looking at words' etymology is helpful in determining polysemy but not the
only solution; as words become lost in etymology, what once was a useful
distinction of meaning may no longer be so.
In
vertical polysemy a word refers to a member of a subcategory (e.g., 'dog' for
'male dog'). A closely related idea is metonym, in which a word with one original
meaning is used to refer to something else connected to it.
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)
Mole
a small burrowing mammal
Bank
the building where a financial institution offers services
a bound collection of pages
Newspaper
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
a piece of a tree
Crane
a bird
References
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