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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. At ________________, we arrived at the village.
  3. The ________________ went through the wall.
  4. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  5. Jeff had to ________________ the pavement for three months before he found a job.
  6. Today is the ________________ day of the holidays. Back to school tomorrow!
  7. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  8. The sergeant loved to ________________ orders at us.
  9. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  10. Birch trees have smooth white ________________.
  11. False peace will not ________________.
  12. Our dog starts to ________________ whenever the doorbell rings.
  13. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  14. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  15. That was a fun ________________.
  16. She broke her ________________ while washing the dishes.
  17. Roulette is a ________________ of chance.
  18. The pointer is employed to find upland ________________.
  19. A ________________ is equal to sixteen ounces.
  20. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  21. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  22. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  23. He drove in a ________________ with his hammer.
  24. Rodrigo's family went to the dog ________________ to adopt a dog.

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

Answer key

  1. cold — not warm
  2. last — finally
  3. nail — for a hammer
  4. content — videos and posts
  5. pound — to hit hard
  6. last — final
  7. clip — for paper
  8. bark — to shout
  9. clip — a video
  10. bark — of a tree
  11. last — to go on
  12. bark — a dog's sound
  13. content — happy
  14. cold — the Cold War
  15. game — a match
  16. nail — on a finger
  17. game — a kind of play
  18. game — wild animals
  19. pound — a weight
  20. content — the amount
  21. clip — to cut
  22. cold — an illness
  23. nail — for a hammer
  24. pound — for dogs

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