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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: toast · shower · clip · mouse · cold · march · field · lie

  1. I like lots of butter on my ________________ in the morning.
  2. After the show, she was the ________________ of the town.
  3. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  4. We took cover from the thunder ________________.
  5. He's taking a ________________ right now.
  6. Is it always a sin to tell a ________________?
  7. The hunter does not ________________ down with the prey.
  8. Vegetables are growing on this ________________.
  9. The dagger's metal was presumably from the same meteor ________________.
  10. I thought I heard a ________________ in the kitchen.
  11. The stadium has a track around the football ________________.
  12. We will have lived in Kyoto for eight years next ________________.
  13. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  14. I would like to propose a ________________ on your birthday.
  15. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  16. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  17. "I don't like games like this," squeaked the ________________.
  18. His birthday is in either ________________ or April.
  19. Should I buy a wireless ________________?
  20. The water is too ________________.
  21. She's an expert in the ________________ of medicine.
  22. A ________________ is a veil over the lips.
  23. The band played a military ________________ at the parade.
  24. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.

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

Answer key

  1. toast — bread
  2. toast — the most admired
  3. cold — an illness
  4. shower — rain
  5. shower — to wash
  6. lie — an untruth
  7. lie — to recline
  8. field — farmland
  9. shower — a meteor shower
  10. mouse — the animal
  11. field — for sport
  12. march — the month
  13. clip — for paper
  14. toast — a drink to someone
  15. clip — a video
  16. cold — the Cold War
  17. mouse — the animal
  18. march — the month
  19. mouse — for a computer
  20. cold — not warm
  21. field — a subject
  22. lie — an untruth
  23. march — music
  24. clip — to cut

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