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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 sergeant loved to ________________ orders at us.
  2. Beijing is the ________________ of China.
  3. Birch trees have smooth white ________________.
  4. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  5. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  6. We're almost out of ________________.
  7. My stomach aches so much that I can't ________________ asleep.
  8. The water is too ________________.
  9. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  10. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  11. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  12. He who climbs up, will ________________ down.
  13. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  14. He still wears his gold wedding ________________.
  15. Michael Jackson and Prince changed the history of ________________ music.
  16. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  17. A second agreement was made due to the large amount of available ________________.
  18. In the ________________, covers are put over the fans in trains.
  19. He's the lead singer in a rock ________________.
  20. He put a rubber ________________ around the bundle of letters.
  21. You don't need to ________________ round.
  22. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  23. The beginning of a sentence starts with a ________________ letter.
  24. Our dog starts to ________________ whenever the doorbell rings.

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

Answer key

  1. bark — to shout
  2. capital — a city
  3. bark — of a tree
  4. clip — to cut
  5. content — happy
  6. pop — soda
  7. fall — to drop
  8. cold — not warm
  9. clip — for paper
  10. cold — the Cold War
  11. content — the amount
  12. fall — to drop
  13. cold — an illness
  14. band — a ring
  15. pop — music
  16. clip — a video
  17. capital — money
  18. fall — the season
  19. band — a music group
  20. band — a rubber band
  21. pop — to visit
  22. content — videos and posts
  23. capital — a big letter
  24. bark — a dog's sound

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