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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. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  2. Have you settled on a ________________?
  3. I put the bag on or beside the ________________.
  4. Will civil ________________ and democracy continue in Algeria?
  5. That was a fun ________________.
  6. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  7. I had a ________________ with my boss today.
  8. The pointer is employed to find upland ________________.
  9. He's the lead singer in a rock ________________.
  10. He still wears his gold wedding ________________.
  11. Professor Sir Peter Hirsch formerly held the ________________.
  12. A ________________ is a sweet brown fruit from a palm tree.
  13. He put a rubber ________________ around the bundle of letters.
  14. Why do cosmetics have an expiration ________________?
  15. Remember our ________________: no talking to strangers, no matter what.
  16. Roulette is a ________________ of chance.
  17. The girl drawing a picture in the first ________________ is my niece.
  18. The chairman did not ________________ out the possibility of a disagreement.
  19. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  20. The water is too ________________.
  21. James Baker serves as an Honorary Co-________________ for the World Justice Project.
  22. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  23. We had to ________________ the boat across the lake.
  24. Check the label for the sugar ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. content — happy
  2. date — on the calendar
  3. chair — to sit on
  4. rule — government
  5. game — a match
  6. content — videos and posts
  7. row — a quarrel
  8. game — wild animals
  9. band — a music group
  10. band — a ring
  11. chair — a professorship
  12. date — the fruit
  13. band — a rubber band
  14. date — on the calendar
  15. rule — a law
  16. game — a kind of play
  17. row — a line
  18. rule — to rule out
  19. cold — the Cold War
  20. cold — not warm
  21. chair — a leader
  22. cold — an illness
  23. row — to paddle
  24. content — the amount

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