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

Word bank: perch · date · cold · clip · wind · row

  1. I had a ________________ with my boss today.
  2. A ________________ is a sweet brown fruit from a palm tree.
  3. The owl hooted softly from its ________________.
  4. It was raining hard, and to make things worse, the ________________ was beginning to rise.
  5. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  6. Have you settled on a ________________?
  7. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  8. The girl drawing a picture in the first ________________ is my niece.
  9. ________________ is common in the lakes of Sweden.
  10. Why do cosmetics have an expiration ________________?
  11. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  12. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  13. The birds use the scarecrow as a ________________.
  14. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  15. The water is too ________________.
  16. The strong ________________ blew his hat off.
  17. He sold his goods at a loss to ________________ up his business.
  18. We had to ________________ the boat across the lake.

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

Answer key

  1. row — a quarrel
  2. date — the fruit
  3. perch — for a bird
  4. wind — moving air
  5. cold — an illness
  6. date — on the calendar
  7. clip — for paper
  8. row — a line
  9. perch — the fish
  10. date — on the calendar
  11. clip — to cut
  12. cold — the Cold War
  13. perch — for a bird
  14. clip — a video
  15. cold — not warm
  16. wind — moving air
  17. wind — to turn a key
  18. row — to paddle

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