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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 moon will ________________ and wane.
  2. Beijing is the ________________ of China.
  3. Don't ________________ yourself. You couldn't afford to buy a house like this.
  4. It's not a deep ________________. It's just a scratch.
  5. We've got to handle this with ________________ gloves.
  6. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  7. He's taking a ________________ right now.
  8. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  9. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  10. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  11. What's the best way to remove ear ________________?
  12. The beginning of a sentence starts with a ________________ letter.
  13. The museum has ________________ figures of famous people.
  14. This looks like a gunshot ________________.
  15. The information is stored in a ________________ on my computer.
  16. I had chicken pox when I was a ________________.
  17. The water is too ________________.
  18. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  19. He rubbed the rust off with a ________________.
  20. We walked down the narrow path in single ________________.
  21. The dagger's metal was presumably from the same meteor ________________.
  22. A second agreement was made due to the large amount of available ________________.
  23. We took cover from the thunder ________________.
  24. We ________________ up on opposing sides.

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

Answer key

  1. wax — to grow
  2. capital — a city
  3. kid — to tease
  4. wound — an injury
  5. kid — young goat (kid gloves)
  6. cold — the Cold War
  7. shower — to wash
  8. content — happy
  9. content — the amount
  10. content — videos and posts
  11. wax — in the ear
  12. capital — a big letter
  13. wax — for sculpting
  14. wound — an injury
  15. file — a document
  16. kid — child
  17. cold — not warm
  18. cold — an illness
  19. file — a tool
  20. file — a line of people
  21. shower — a meteor shower
  22. capital — money
  23. shower — rain
  24. wound — past of 'wind'

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