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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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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: cold · bat · band · degree · ground · clip · stem · content

  1. He still wears his gold wedding ________________.
  2. He put a rubber ________________ around the bundle of letters.
  3. Buy me a box of chocolates and I'll be ________________.
  4. I had a bad ________________ and was in bed for a week.
  5. He's the lead singer in a rock ________________.
  6. Check the label for the sugar ________________.
  7. TikTok makes it very easy to create ________________.
  8. Its rival in the ________________ War, the Soviet Union, exploited this at the time.
  9. Hold the papers together with a ________________.
  10. How can I extract the audio from a video ________________?
  11. The big green plant was starting to droop at the ________________.
  12. It seems a cruel thing to ________________ a bird's wings.
  13. A university ________________ is the ticket to a successful career.
  14. Many English words ________________ from Latin.
  15. Tom didn't even ________________ an eye.
  16. In my city, the temperature is one ________________ above zero.
  17. The ________________ was stolen yesterday, along with the balls.
  18. The ________________ hangs upside down in the cave.
  19. Add some ________________ pepper to it.
  20. To what ________________ are you interested in baseball?
  21. Scientists study ________________ cells to repair damaged tissue.
  22. There's no middle ________________.
  23. The water is too ________________.
  24. The ________________ was covered with snow, as far as the eye could see.

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

Answer key

  1. band — a ring
  2. band — a rubber band
  3. content — happy
  4. cold — an illness
  5. band — a music group
  6. content — the amount
  7. content — videos and posts
  8. cold — the Cold War
  9. clip — for paper
  10. clip — a video
  11. stem — of a plant
  12. clip — to cut
  13. degree — from a university
  14. stem — to come from
  15. bat — in an idiom
  16. degree — temperature
  17. bat — for baseball
  18. bat — the animal
  19. ground — crushed
  20. degree — an amount
  21. stem — a stem cell
  22. ground — a position
  23. cold — not warm
  24. ground — the earth

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