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Multiple-Meaning Words

A multiple-meaning word is spelled and said the same way but means different things: a bat flies at night, and you hit a ball with a bat. Context is the only clue, which is why these words are such good reading practice.

Here are 124 multiple-meaning words from past ClueBy puzzles, each with a real example sentence for every meaning. Use them as a reference, or make a printable worksheet below.

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Students read each sentence and write the missing word. Every word appears in several sentences, each time with a different meaning.

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Multiple-Meaning Words

Name: ____________________Date: __________

Write the missing word in each sentence. Each word is used more than once, with a different meaning each time.

  1. I would like to propose a ________________ on your birthday.
  2. After the show, she was the ________________ of the town.
  3. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  4. I felt an uncomfortable tightness in my ________________.
  5. Biology is a ________________ of science.
  6. Did you get a birthday ________________ for him this year?
  7. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  8. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  9. She laid her head on my ________________ so she could listen to my heartbeat.
  10. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  11. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  12. I like lots of butter on my ________________ in the morning.
  13. Our bank has a ________________ near the station.
  14. The lid of the ________________ creaked open.
  15. The water is too ________________.
  16. He chopped down the ________________ with an ax.
  17. Actually, the ________________ method has plenty of room for improvement.
  18. My partner was ________________ at the birth of our baby.

Sentences from ClueBy, Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR) and Common Voice (CC0). clueby.com

Answer key

  1. toast — a drink to someone
  2. toast — the most admired
  3. clip — a video
  4. chest — of your body
  5. branch — a division
  6. present — a gift
  7. cold — an illness
  8. clip — to cut
  9. chest — of your body
  10. clip — for paper
  11. cold — the Cold War
  12. toast — bread
  13. branch — of a bank
  14. chest — a box
  15. cold — not warm
  16. branch — of a tree
  17. present — the time now
  18. present — there

Multiple-meaning words list

Tick up to 10 words to build a worksheet with just those words.

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Frequently asked questions

What are multiple-meaning words?

Words with the same spelling and pronunciation but more than one meaning, like bark (of a dog or of a tree) or bank (for money or of a river). You can only tell which meaning is meant from the rest of the sentence.

Are multiple-meaning words the same as homonyms?

Mostly, yes. Teachers often use "multiple-meaning words" and "homonyms" for the same idea. Homophones are different: they sound alike but are spelled differently, like flour and flower.

Are the worksheets free?

Yes. Make and print as many as you like for home or classroom use. Each sheet has its own link, so you can print the same one again.

Where do the words come from?

From past ClueBy puzzles, a daily game where you sort twelve sentences by their missing word. A new puzzle every day adds four more words to this list.

Sentences from ClueBy, Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR) and Common Voice (CC0). clueby.com