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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 120 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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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: dip · cold · spring · clip · ground · hand · fall · bat

  1. He who climbs up, will ________________ down.
  2. I like to ________________ a cookie in coffee.
  3. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  4. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  5. I got dealt a bad ________________.
  6. There's a broken ________________ in the bed.
  7. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  8. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  9. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  10. In the ________________, covers are put over the fans in trains.
  11. My stomach aches so much that I can't ________________ asleep.
  12. The flowers bloom in the ________________.
  13. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.
  14. The ________________ was so hot, it burned my tongue.
  15. They watched the sun ________________ below the horizon.
  16. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  17. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  18. Do you need a ________________ with that?
  19. He hasn't even shaken my ________________.
  20. The water is too ________________.
  21. The hotel is built around a mineral ________________.
  22. There's no middle ________________.
  23. The ________________ was covered with snow, as far as the eye could see.
  24. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.

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

Answer key

  1. fall — to drop
  2. dip — to dunk
  3. clip — to cut
  4. clip — for paper
  5. hand — in cards
  6. spring — a coil
  7. bat — the animal
  8. ground — crushed
  9. bat — for baseball
  10. fall — the season
  11. fall — to drop
  12. spring — the season
  13. bat — in an idiom
  14. dip — a sauce
  15. dip — to sink
  16. clip — a video
  17. cold — the Cold War
  18. hand — help
  19. hand — part of the body
  20. cold — not warm
  21. spring — of water
  22. ground — a position
  23. ground — the earth
  24. cold — an illness

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