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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: stock · hand · capital · bat · net · swing · row · wound

  1. What was your ________________ profit last year?
  2. Do you need a ________________ with that?
  3. I had a ________________ with my boss today.
  4. It's not a deep ________________. It's just a scratch.
  5. The ball hit the back of the ________________.
  6. What's the difference between broth and ________________?
  7. A second agreement was made due to the large amount of available ________________.
  8. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  9. We ________________ up on opposing sides.
  10. The beginning of a sentence starts with a ________________ letter.
  11. David sat on the ________________.
  12. The ________________ market has crashed.
  13. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  14. Beijing is the ________________ of China.
  15. The supermarket has a large ________________ of merchandise.
  16. In jazz, ________________ was gradually being replaced by bebop.
  17. I got dealt a bad ________________.
  18. This looks like a gunshot ________________.
  19. He took the fish out of the ________________.
  20. The coach helped Matthew straighten out his golf ________________, improving his game.
  21. He hasn't even shaken my ________________.
  22. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.
  23. We had to ________________ the boat across the lake.
  24. The girl drawing a picture in the first ________________ is my niece.

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

Answer key

  1. net — after costs
  2. hand — help
  3. row — a quarrel
  4. wound — an injury
  5. net — in sport
  6. stock — a soup base
  7. capital — money
  8. bat — for baseball
  9. wound — past of 'wind'
  10. capital — a big letter
  11. swing — to play on
  12. stock — shares
  13. bat — the animal
  14. capital — a city
  15. stock — goods
  16. swing — music
  17. hand — in cards
  18. wound — an injury
  19. net — for catching
  20. swing — in golf
  21. hand — part of the body
  22. bat — in an idiom
  23. row — to paddle
  24. row — a line

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