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Polysemy is distinct from monosemy, where a word has a single meaning. [3] Polysemy is distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two or more words (such as bear the animal, and the verb bear); whereas homonymy is a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy is not. In discerning whether a given set of meanings ...
When the prefix "re-" is added to a monosyllabic word, the word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb. Most of the pairs listed below are closely related: for example, "absent" as a noun meaning "missing", and as a verb meaning "to make oneself missing". There are also many cases in which homographs are of an entirely separate origin, or ...
The lexical ambiguity of a word or phrase applies to it having more than one meaning in the language to which the word belongs. [4] "Meaning" here refers to whatever should be represented by a good dictionary. For instance, the word "bank" has several distinct lexical definitions, including "financial institution" and "edge of a river".
Although the everyday meaning of plural is "more than one", the grammatical term has a slightly different technical meaning. In the English system of grammatical number, singular means "one (or minus one)", and plural means "not singular". In other words, plural means not just "more than one" but also "less than one (except minus one)".
A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. [1] Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. [2]
Holophrases are defined as a "single-word utterance which is used by a child to express more than one meaning usually attributed to that single word by adults." [ 5 ] The holophrastic hypothesis argues that children use single words to refer to different meanings in the same way an adult would represent those meanings by using an entire ...
Much more than programming languages do, it relies on context instead of explicitness; meaning is implicit within a context. Common examples are as follows: The word "diabetes" without further specification usually refers to diabetes mellitus. The word "angina" without further specification usually refers to angina pectoris.
ambiguity – when a word or phrase pertains to its having more than one meaning in the language to which the word belongs. vagueness – when borderline cases interfere with an interpretation. [2] equivocation – the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time). [3]