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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. He's taking a ________________ right now.
  2. I cannot shed a ________________ for that horrible man.
  3. The information is stored in a ________________ on my computer.
  4. A university ________________ is the ticket to a successful career.
  5. It is only in accepting others that we can ________________ down our own barriers.
  6. To what ________________ are you interested in baseball?
  7. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  8. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  9. We took cover from the thunder ________________.
  10. We need to address the ________________ of the problem.
  11. We walked down the narrow path in single ________________.
  12. It's one o'clock ________________.
  13. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.
  14. This knife is not ________________ enough.
  15. The ________________ of 'teacher' is 'teach'.
  16. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.
  17. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  18. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  19. The dagger's metal was presumably from the same meteor ________________.
  20. He's quite ________________, isn't he?
  21. In my city, the temperature is one ________________ above zero.
  22. Drying a ________________ is more honorable than shedding torrents of blood.
  23. The ________________ of a dandelion is edible, too.
  24. He rubbed the rust off with a ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. shower — to wash
  2. tear — from crying
  3. file — a document
  4. degree — from a university
  5. tear — to rip
  6. degree — an amount
  7. bat — the animal
  8. field — farmland
  9. shower — rain
  10. root — the cause
  11. file — a line of people
  12. sharp — exactly
  13. field — for sport
  14. sharp — with an edge
  15. root — of a word
  16. bat — in an idiom
  17. bat — for baseball
  18. field — a subject
  19. shower — a meteor shower
  20. sharp — clever
  21. degree — temperature
  22. tear — from crying
  23. root — of a plant
  24. file — a tool

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