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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. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  2. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  3. Each ________________ is a complete and highly sophisticated living world in its own right.
  4. The girl drawing a picture in the first ________________ is my niece.
  5. He was locked up in a ________________.
  6. Roulette is a ________________ of chance.
  7. I'm the one who owns all this ________________.
  8. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  9. There's no middle ________________.
  10. The pointer is employed to find upland ________________.
  11. That was a fun ________________.
  12. When are we going to ________________?
  13. I had a ________________ with my boss today.
  14. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  15. Algeria is a ________________ of gas and oil.
  16. We had to ________________ the boat across the lake.
  17. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  18. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  19. Oh no! I wasn't paying attention and left my ________________ phone in the restaurant!
  20. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  21. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  22. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.
  23. The water is too ________________.
  24. The ________________ was covered with snow, as far as the eye could see.

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

Answer key

  1. content — the amount
  2. cold — the Cold War
  3. cell — in biology
  4. row — a line
  5. cell — in a prison
  6. game — a kind of play
  7. land — ground
  8. content — happy
  9. ground — a position
  10. game — wild animals
  11. game — a match
  12. land — to come down
  13. row — a quarrel
  14. cold — an illness
  15. land — a country
  16. row — to paddle
  17. bat — the animal
  18. content — videos and posts
  19. cell — a phone
  20. bat — for baseball
  21. ground — crushed
  22. bat — in an idiom
  23. cold — not warm
  24. ground — the earth

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