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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 116 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 flowers bloom in the ________________.
  2. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  3. The hotel is built around a mineral ________________.
  4. I'm the one who owns all this ________________.
  5. Do you need a ________________ with that?
  6. He hasn't even shaken my ________________.
  7. We've got to handle this with ________________ gloves.
  8. She's preparing to ________________ her idea to the investors.
  9. She's sitting on a gold ________________.
  10. He was blown up by a land ________________.
  11. I got dealt a bad ________________.
  12. The room was ________________ black, so I couldn't see a thing.
  13. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.
  14. I met an old friend of ________________ the other day.
  15. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.
  16. The players ran onto the football ________________.
  17. Algeria is a ________________ of gas and oil.
  18. I had chicken pox when I was a ________________.
  19. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  20. Don't ________________ yourself. You couldn't afford to buy a house like this.
  21. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  22. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  23. When are we going to ________________?
  24. There's a broken ________________ in the bed.

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

Answer key

  1. spring — the season
  2. bat — for baseball
  3. spring — of water
  4. land — ground
  5. hand — help
  6. hand — part of the body
  7. kid — young goat (kid gloves)
  8. pitch — a sales talk
  9. mine — for digging
  10. mine — an explosive
  11. hand — in cards
  12. pitch — completely
  13. bat — in an idiom
  14. mine — belonging to me
  15. field — for sport
  16. pitch — a sports field
  17. land — a country
  18. kid — child
  19. field — farmland
  20. kid — to tease
  21. bat — the animal
  22. field — a subject
  23. land — to come down
  24. spring — a coil

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