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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: ball · ground · wind · cold · arm · march · clip · file

  1. The water is too ________________.
  2. She sat on the ________________ of the sofa.
  3. The ________________ was covered with snow, as far as the eye could see.
  4. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  5. I was having a ________________ recording these guys.
  6. It was raining hard, and to make things worse, the ________________ was beginning to rise.
  7. My father caught me by the ________________.
  8. The strong ________________ blew his hat off.
  9. We walked down the narrow path in single ________________.
  10. He sold his goods at a loss to ________________ up his business.
  11. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  12. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  13. We will have lived in Kyoto for eight years next ________________.
  14. The band played a military ________________ at the parade.
  15. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  16. The kitten curled into a ________________.
  17. His birthday is in either ________________ or April.
  18. The information is stored in a ________________ on my computer.
  19. I'd give my right ________________ to be ambidextrous.
  20. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  21. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  22. There's no middle ________________.
  23. He rubbed the rust off with a ________________.
  24. The King held a masked ________________.

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

Answer key

  1. cold — not warm
  2. arm — a part of something
  3. ground — the earth
  4. ground — crushed
  5. ball — a great time
  6. wind — moving air
  7. arm — part of the body
  8. wind — moving air
  9. file — a line of people
  10. wind — to turn a key
  11. clip — a video
  12. clip — for paper
  13. march — the month
  14. march — music
  15. cold — an illness
  16. ball — a round shape
  17. march — the month
  18. file — a document
  19. arm — part of the body
  20. clip — to cut
  21. cold — the Cold War
  22. ground — a position
  23. file — a tool
  24. ball — a dance

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