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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 120 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. That was a fun ________________.
  2. I need a new inner ________________ for my bike tire.
  3. The sergeant loved to ________________ orders at us.
  4. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  5. There's no middle ________________.
  6. The water is too ________________.
  7. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  8. Don't ________________ yourself. You couldn't afford to buy a house like this.
  9. Birch trees have smooth white ________________.
  10. I want a large ________________ of toothpaste.
  11. The ________________ was covered with snow, as far as the eye could see.
  12. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  13. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  14. Our dog starts to ________________ whenever the doorbell rings.
  15. My stomach aches so much that I can't ________________ asleep.
  16. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  17. Roulette is a ________________ of chance.
  18. I had chicken pox when I was a ________________.
  19. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  20. He who climbs up, will ________________ down.
  21. We've got to handle this with ________________ gloves.
  22. In the ________________, covers are put over the fans in trains.
  23. The pointer is employed to find upland ________________.
  24. I'll be taking the ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. game — a match
  2. tube — in a tire
  3. bark — to shout
  4. ground — crushed
  5. ground — a position
  6. cold — not warm
  7. clip — for paper
  8. kid — to tease
  9. bark — of a tree
  10. tube — a container
  11. ground — the earth
  12. clip — to cut
  13. cold — an illness
  14. bark — a dog's sound
  15. fall — to drop
  16. cold — the Cold War
  17. game — a kind of play
  18. kid — child
  19. clip — a video
  20. fall — to drop
  21. kid — young goat (kid gloves)
  22. fall — the season
  23. game — wild animals
  24. tube — the underground

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