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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: squash · court · chest · bat · row · cold · wound · land

  1. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  2. The lid of the ________________ creaked open.
  3. The girl drawing a picture in the first ________________ is my niece.
  4. We ________________ up on opposing sides.
  5. When are we going to ________________?
  6. I'd like to play a game of ________________.
  7. I'm the one who owns all this ________________.
  8. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  9. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  10. Cut the butternut ________________ into one-inch cubes.
  11. I felt an uncomfortable tightness in my ________________.
  12. The ball is in your ________________.
  13. We had to ________________ the boat across the lake.
  14. Algeria is a ________________ of gas and oil.
  15. The ________________ found him guilty of stealing money.
  16. I had a ________________ with my boss today.
  17. The water is too ________________.
  18. When a clown is made king, the ________________ becomes a circus.
  19. The president vowed to ________________ the mutiny.
  20. It's not a deep ________________. It's just a scratch.
  21. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  22. This looks like a gunshot ________________.
  23. She laid her head on my ________________ so she could listen to my heartbeat.
  24. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.

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

Answer key

  1. cold — an illness
  2. chest — a box
  3. row — a line
  4. wound — past of 'wind'
  5. land — to come down
  6. squash — the sport
  7. land — ground
  8. bat — for baseball
  9. bat — the animal
  10. squash — the vegetable
  11. chest — of your body
  12. court — for sport
  13. row — to paddle
  14. land — a country
  15. court — of law
  16. row — a quarrel
  17. cold — not warm
  18. court — of a king
  19. squash — to crush
  20. wound — an injury
  21. cold — the Cold War
  22. wound — an injury
  23. chest — of your body
  24. bat — in an idiom

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