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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 water is too ________________.
  2. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  3. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  4. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  5. I had chicken pox when I was a ________________.
  6. Use a garden ________________ to turn the soil.
  7. A second agreement was made due to the large amount of available ________________.
  8. Don't ________________ yourself. You couldn't afford to buy a house like this.
  9. We've got to handle this with ________________ gloves.
  10. He sold his goods at a loss to ________________ up his business.
  11. Oh no! I wasn't paying attention and left my ________________ phone in the restaurant!
  12. Each ________________ is a complete and highly sophisticated living world in its own right.
  13. Beijing is the ________________ of China.
  14. The strong ________________ blew his hat off.
  15. The beginning of a sentence starts with a ________________ letter.
  16. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  17. It was raining hard, and to make things worse, the ________________ was beginning to rise.
  18. We usually eat with a knife, ________________ and spoon.
  19. The information is stored in a ________________ on my computer.
  20. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.
  21. We came to a ________________ in the road and had no idea which direction to go.
  22. He rubbed the rust off with a ________________.
  23. We walked down the narrow path in single ________________.
  24. He was locked up in a ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. cold — not warm
  2. cold — the Cold War
  3. field — a subject
  4. cold — an illness
  5. kid — child
  6. fork — a garden tool
  7. capital — money
  8. kid — to tease
  9. kid — young goat (kid gloves)
  10. wind — to turn a key
  11. cell — a phone
  12. cell — in biology
  13. capital — a city
  14. wind — moving air
  15. capital — a big letter
  16. field — farmland
  17. wind — moving air
  18. fork — to eat with
  19. file — a document
  20. field — for sport
  21. fork — in a road
  22. file — a tool
  23. file — a line of people
  24. cell — in a prison

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