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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. Professor Sir Peter Hirsch formerly held the ________________.
  2. Did you get a birthday ________________ for him this year?
  3. Do you need a ________________ with that?
  4. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  5. The surfers were looking for the perfect ________________.
  6. A lot of friends came to ________________ goodbye to me.
  7. A second agreement was made due to the large amount of available ________________.
  8. James Baker serves as an Honorary Co-________________ for the World Justice Project.
  9. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.
  10. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  11. He hasn't even shaken my ________________.
  12. I got dealt a bad ________________.
  13. Actually, the ________________ method has plenty of room for improvement.
  14. My partner was ________________ at the birth of our baby.
  15. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  16. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  17. Beijing is the ________________ of China.
  18. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  19. I put the bag on or beside the ________________.
  20. The beginning of a sentence starts with a ________________ letter.
  21. I am seized by an uncontrollable ________________ of sadness.
  22. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  23. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  24. The water is too ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. chair — a professorship
  2. present — a gift
  3. hand — help
  4. cold — an illness
  5. wave — of the sea
  6. wave — with your hand
  7. capital — money
  8. chair — a leader
  9. bat — in an idiom
  10. bat — the animal
  11. hand — part of the body
  12. hand — in cards
  13. present — the time now
  14. present — there
  15. clip — to cut
  16. bat — for baseball
  17. capital — a city
  18. clip — for paper
  19. chair — to sit on
  20. capital — a big letter
  21. wave — a sudden rise
  22. clip — a video
  23. cold — the Cold War
  24. cold — not warm

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