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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: patient · clip · land · file · cold · field · chair · race

  1. I'm the one who owns all this ________________.
  2. James Baker serves as an Honorary Co-________________ for the World Justice Project.
  3. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  4. The nurse administered an injection to the ________________.
  5. Professor Sir Peter Hirsch formerly held the ________________.
  6. The information is stored in a ________________ on my computer.
  7. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  8. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  9. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.
  10. Algeria is a ________________ of gas and oil.
  11. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  12. Atomic bombs are a danger to the human ________________.
  13. Only by prohibiting all nuclear weapons, we can together stop the arms ________________.
  14. We walked down the narrow path in single ________________.
  15. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  16. The farmer was ________________ with the unruly horse.
  17. I put the bag on or beside the ________________.
  18. He rubbed the rust off with a ________________.
  19. When are we going to ________________?
  20. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  21. Winning one ________________ isn't the same as dominating a sport.
  22. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  23. The water is too ________________.
  24. The ________________ was transferred to the cardiology ward.

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

Answer key

  1. land — ground
  2. chair — a leader
  3. cold — an illness
  4. patient — a sick person
  5. chair — a professorship
  6. file — a document
  7. cold — the Cold War
  8. field — a subject
  9. field — for sport
  10. land — a country
  11. clip — to cut
  12. race — humankind
  13. race — the arms race
  14. file — a line of people
  15. field — farmland
  16. patient — calm and waiting
  17. chair — to sit on
  18. file — a tool
  19. land — to come down
  20. clip — for paper
  21. race — a contest
  22. clip — a video
  23. cold — not warm
  24. patient — a sick person

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