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For example, a word can have several word senses. [3] 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 ...
Metalepsis uses a familiar word or a phrase in a new context. [13] For example, "lead foot" may describe a fast driver; lead is proverbially heavy, and a foot exerting more pressure on the accelerator causes a vehicle to go faster (in this context unduly so). [14] The figure of speech is a "metonymy of a metonymy". [13]
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When an ambiguity instead results from two separate words which happen to be pronounced the same way, it is called homonymy. For instance, the English word "row" can denote the action of rowing or to an arrangement of objects. In practice, polysemy and homonymy can be difficult to distinguish. [4]
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word original can mean "authentic, traditional", or "novel, never done before". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [1] [2] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy.
Monosemy as a methodology for analysis is based on the recognition that almost all cases of polysemy (where a word is understood to have multiple meanings) require context in order to differentiate these supposed meanings.
Daniel Chandler defines the term as "a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified". [4] The concept of floating signifiers originates with Claude Lévi-Strauss, who identified cultural ideas like mana as "represent[ing] an undetermined quantity of signification, in itself void of meaning and thus apt to receive any meaning".