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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. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  2. A university ________________ is the ticket to a successful career.
  3. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  4. He hasn't even shaken my ________________.
  5. The president vowed to ________________ the mutiny.
  6. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  7. The supermarket has a large ________________ of merchandise.
  8. I'm the one who owns all this ________________.
  9. Do you need a ________________ with that?
  10. The ________________ market has crashed.
  11. When are we going to ________________?
  12. To what ________________ are you interested in baseball?
  13. In my city, the temperature is one ________________ above zero.
  14. I got dealt a bad ________________.
  15. The water is too ________________.
  16. The girl drawing a picture in the first ________________ is my niece.
  17. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  18. Cut the butternut ________________ into one-inch cubes.
  19. Algeria is a ________________ of gas and oil.
  20. We had to ________________ the boat across the lake.
  21. I'd like to play a game of ________________.
  22. I had a ________________ with my boss today.
  23. What's the difference between broth and ________________?
  24. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. field — a subject
  2. degree — from a university
  3. field — farmland
  4. hand — part of the body
  5. squash — to crush
  6. cold — an illness
  7. stock — goods
  8. land — ground
  9. hand — help
  10. stock — shares
  11. land — to come down
  12. degree — an amount
  13. degree — temperature
  14. hand — in cards
  15. cold — not warm
  16. row — a line
  17. cold — the Cold War
  18. squash — the vegetable
  19. land — a country
  20. row — to paddle
  21. squash — the sport
  22. row — a quarrel
  23. stock — a soup base
  24. field — for sport

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