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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. The water is too ________________.
  2. Algeria is a ________________ of gas and oil.
  3. Do not ________________ roses in the fall.
  4. There's no middle ________________.
  5. There's a broken ________________ in the bed.
  6. I cannot ________________ this tree. It's too high.
  7. Grandma has made a Swiss ________________.
  8. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  9. The flowers bloom in the ________________.
  10. The teacher called the ________________ to see who was absent.
  11. We're on a ________________ here.
  12. He was blown up by a land ________________.
  13. A ________________ is just a dried plum.
  14. The little girl was crying for the teddy ________________.
  15. The hotel is built around a mineral ________________.
  16. Many happy returns to all who ________________ the name of a flower!
  17. The ________________ was covered with snow, as far as the eye could see.
  18. I met an old friend of ________________ the other day.
  19. She's sitting on a gold ________________.
  20. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  21. I'm the one who owns all this ________________.
  22. When are we going to ________________?
  23. A black ________________ roamed the forest.
  24. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.

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

Answer key

  1. cold — not warm
  2. land — a country
  3. prune — to trim
  4. ground — a position
  5. spring — a coil
  6. prune — to trim
  7. roll — a cake
  8. ground — crushed
  9. spring — the season
  10. roll — a list
  11. roll — on a roll
  12. mine — an explosive
  13. prune — the fruit
  14. bear — the animal
  15. spring — of water
  16. bear — to put up with
  17. ground — the earth
  18. mine — belonging to me
  19. mine — for digging
  20. cold — an illness
  21. land — ground
  22. land — to come down
  23. bear — the animal
  24. cold — the Cold War

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