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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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Word bank
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Multiple-Meaning Words

Name: ____________________Date: __________

Write the missing word from the word bank in each sentence. Each word is used more than once, with a different meaning each time.

Word bank: cell · content · tear · court · field · cold

  1. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  2. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  3. Oh no! I wasn't paying attention and left my ________________ phone in the restaurant!
  4. Drying a ________________ is more honorable than shedding torrents of blood.
  5. He was locked up in a ________________.
  6. I cannot shed a ________________ for that horrible man.
  7. The water is too ________________.
  8. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  9. When a clown is made king, the ________________ becomes a circus.
  10. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.
  11. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  12. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  13. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  14. The ball is in your ________________.
  15. It is only in accepting others that we can ________________ down our own barriers.
  16. The ________________ found him guilty of stealing money.
  17. Each ________________ is a complete and highly sophisticated living world in its own right.
  18. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. field — farmland
  2. content — happy
  3. cell — a phone
  4. tear — from crying
  5. cell — in a prison
  6. tear — from crying
  7. cold — not warm
  8. cold — an illness
  9. court — of a king
  10. field — for sport
  11. content — the amount
  12. cold — the Cold War
  13. field — a subject
  14. court — for sport
  15. tear — to rip
  16. court — of law
  17. cell — in biology
  18. content — videos and posts

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