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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. The lid of the ________________ creaked open.
  2. Manchester University ________________ is the university's academic publishing house.
  3. The water is too ________________.
  4. To what ________________ are you interested in baseball?
  5. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  6. She laid her head on my ________________ so she could listen to my heartbeat.
  7. This knife is not ________________ enough.
  8. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  9. Did you ________________ the button?
  10. There's no middle ________________.
  11. It's one o'clock ________________.
  12. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  13. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  14. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  15. He's quite ________________, isn't he?
  16. A university ________________ is the ticket to a successful career.
  17. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  18. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  19. I felt an uncomfortable tightness in my ________________.
  20. The function of the ________________ is to provide the common people with facts.
  21. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.
  22. In my city, the temperature is one ________________ above zero.
  23. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  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. chest — a box
  2. press — a publisher
  3. cold — not warm
  4. degree — an amount
  5. cold — an illness
  6. chest — of your body
  7. sharp — with an edge
  8. clip — to cut
  9. press — to push
  10. ground — a position
  11. sharp — exactly
  12. cold — the Cold War
  13. clip — a video
  14. clip — for paper
  15. sharp — clever
  16. degree — from a university
  17. ground — crushed
  18. field — a subject
  19. chest — of your body
  20. press — newspapers
  21. field — for sport
  22. degree — temperature
  23. field — farmland
  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