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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. When I ________________ my fingers, you'll wake up.
  2. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  3. The goat rested comfortably on a soft bed of ________________.
  4. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  5. It always has to be a ________________ man with them.
  6. She laid her head on my ________________ so she could listen to my heartbeat.
  7. A drowning man will clutch at a ________________.
  8. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  9. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  10. The dagger's metal was presumably from the same meteor ________________.
  11. ________________ out of it! You haven't done a thing all week.
  12. You don't have to ________________ at me like that.
  13. He's taking a ________________ right now.
  14. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  15. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  16. I felt an uncomfortable tightness in my ________________.
  17. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  18. We had a fire ________________ at school today.
  19. The soldiers did ________________ on the parade ground every morning.
  20. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  21. I need a ________________ to install the towel rack.
  22. We took cover from the thunder ________________.
  23. The water is too ________________.
  24. The lid of the ________________ creaked open.

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

Answer key

  1. snap — to click
  2. clip — to cut
  3. straw — dry grass
  4. content — happy
  5. straw — a straw man
  6. chest — of your body
  7. straw — to clutch at straws
  8. clip — for paper
  9. cold — the Cold War
  10. shower — a meteor shower
  11. snap — to snap out of it
  12. snap — to speak sharply
  13. shower — to wash
  14. content — videos and posts
  15. clip — a video
  16. chest — of your body
  17. cold — an illness
  18. drill — a practice
  19. drill — army training
  20. content — the amount
  21. drill — the tool
  22. shower — rain
  23. cold — not warm
  24. chest — a box

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