Glossary:Polysemy

Warning:
The material on this page has been created as part of a seminar. It is still heavily under construction and we do not guarantee its correctness. If you have comments on this page or suggestions for improvement, please contact Manfred Sailer.
This note will be removed once the page has been carefully checked and integrated into the main part of this wiki.

Lexical Ambiguity

/ˈlek-si-kəl æmbigjʊɘti/

Definition

Lexical ambiguity arises if one word has two ore more different meanings. This is likely to occur with polysemous and homophone words.

Examples

pupil: 1. a student; 2. the centre of the eye
break: 1. time to relax; 2. action of damaging something

Related terms

• Ambiguity
• Homophony
• Polysemy

References

• Bieswanger, Markus & Annette Becker. 2006. Introduction to English Linguistics (3rd edition). Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke Verlag.