polysemy
nounUK /ˈpɒ.lɪ.siː.mi/
Etymology From polyseme + -y.
1
Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences, Semantics Usually The quality characteristic of a polyseme, a sign (such as a word or symbol) that has multiple meanings (senses), often including multiple similar ones.
- Fifty years ago the linguist and semanticist Stephen Ullmann wrote that polysemy, the fact that some words have a network of multiple but related meanings, is "the pivot of semantic analysis" […]2011, Brigitte Nerlich, Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meaning in Mind and Language, page 3:
- Polysemy proliferates in natural language: Virtually every word is polysemous to some extent.2017 July 27, Agustín Vicente and Ingrid L. Falkum, “Polysemy”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press:
- Related terms
- ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, polysemic, polysemous, polysemously, homonymy