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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 120 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. Don't ________________ yourself. You couldn't afford to buy a house like this.
  2. It's best to wear a ________________ on your head during the cold Moscow winters.
  3. They watched the sun ________________ below the horizon.
  4. It was raining hard, and to make things worse, the ________________ was beginning to rise.
  5. The strong ________________ blew his hat off.
  6. The water is too ________________.
  7. A university ________________ is the ticket to a successful career.
  8. I had chicken pox when I was a ________________.
  9. How do you ________________ your surname?
  10. He asked the witch to reverse the ________________.
  11. In my city, the temperature is one ________________ above zero.
  12. The ________________ was so hot, it burned my tongue.
  13. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  14. To what ________________ are you interested in baseball?
  15. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  16. I like to ________________ a cookie in coffee.
  17. The polar ice ________________ is melting.
  18. He sold his goods at a loss to ________________ up his business.
  19. We've got to handle this with ________________ gloves.
  20. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  21. We've had a long dry ________________ this summer.
  22. Can you put the ________________ back on the pen?
  23. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  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. kid — to tease
  2. cap — a hat
  3. dip — to sink
  4. wind — moving air
  5. wind — moving air
  6. cold — not warm
  7. degree — from a university
  8. kid — child
  9. spell — letters
  10. spell — magic
  11. degree — temperature
  12. dip — a sauce
  13. clip — to cut
  14. degree — an amount
  15. cold — an illness
  16. dip — to dunk
  17. cap — of ice
  18. wind — to turn a key
  19. kid — young goat (kid gloves)
  20. clip — a video
  21. spell — a short time
  22. cap — a lid
  23. clip — for paper
  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