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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. The water is too ________________.
  2. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  3. We ________________ up on opposing sides.
  4. A university ________________ is the ticket to a successful career.
  5. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  6. The pointer is employed to find upland ________________.
  7. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  8. It's not a deep ________________. It's just a scratch.
  9. That was a fun ________________.
  10. He's the lead singer in a rock ________________.
  11. Roulette is a ________________ of chance.
  12. She's sitting on a gold ________________.
  13. There's no middle ________________.
  14. He still wears his gold wedding ________________.
  15. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  16. He put a rubber ________________ around the bundle of letters.
  17. He was blown up by a land ________________.
  18. I met an old friend of ________________ the other day.
  19. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  20. In my city, the temperature is one ________________ above zero.
  21. This looks like a gunshot ________________.
  22. The ________________ was covered with snow, as far as the eye could see.
  23. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  24. To what ________________ are you interested in baseball?

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

Answer key

  1. cold — not warm
  2. content — happy
  3. wound — past of 'wind'
  4. degree — from a university
  5. cold — an illness
  6. game — wild animals
  7. content — the amount
  8. wound — an injury
  9. game — a match
  10. band — a music group
  11. game — a kind of play
  12. mine — for digging
  13. ground — a position
  14. band — a ring
  15. cold — the Cold War
  16. band — a rubber band
  17. mine — an explosive
  18. mine — belonging to me
  19. ground — crushed
  20. degree — temperature
  21. wound — an injury
  22. ground — the earth
  23. content — videos and posts
  24. degree — an 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