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

Word bank: degree · straw · cap · cell · cold · spring

  1. It's best to wear a ________________ on your head during the cold Moscow winters.
  2. There's a broken ________________ in the bed.
  3. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  4. He was locked up in a ________________.
  5. The flowers bloom in the ________________.
  6. A drowning man will clutch at a ________________.
  7. The water is too ________________.
  8. A university ________________ is the ticket to a successful career.
  9. Can you put the ________________ back on the pen?
  10. It always has to be a ________________ man with them.
  11. The goat rested comfortably on a soft bed of ________________.
  12. The polar ice ________________ is melting.
  13. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  14. Oh no! I wasn't paying attention and left my ________________ phone in the restaurant!
  15. Each ________________ is a complete and highly sophisticated living world in its own right.
  16. In my city, the temperature is one ________________ above zero.
  17. To what ________________ are you interested in baseball?
  18. The hotel is built around a mineral ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. cap — a hat
  2. spring — a coil
  3. cold — an illness
  4. cell — in a prison
  5. spring — the season
  6. straw — to clutch at straws
  7. cold — not warm
  8. degree — from a university
  9. cap — a lid
  10. straw — a straw man
  11. straw — dry grass
  12. cap — of ice
  13. cold — the Cold War
  14. cell — a phone
  15. cell — in biology
  16. degree — temperature
  17. degree — an amount
  18. spring — of water

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