a term applied to words that have more than one related meaning; multiple meaning. Note: The term is used only to refer to the variant meanings of one base word or dictionary entry, as run; it does not apply to all meanings of homonyms such as mood (feeling) and mood (verb form).
Existence of many meanings e.g., do up your fly, there's a fly in my soup, I will to London.
the ambiguity of an individual word or phrase that can be used (in different contexts) to express two or more different meanings
The capacity of a word to have multiple but related meanings; the English word foot has a central meaning (body part), a peripheral meaning (bottom part of something), and an extended meaning (unit of measurement).
The proliferation of words sharing a single, ancestral root. Examples include English variations of the Latin root procedere, proceed, such as 'process', 'procede', 'processional', 'proceding', etc.
Refers to words that have more than one meaning. See also word sense.
One word that has two (or more) (closely) related meanings. (Thorsten Tripple)
Polysemy ( or ) (from the Greek πολυσημεία = multiple meaning) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple meanings (sememes, i.e. a large semantic field). This is a pivotal concept within social sciences, such as and linguistics.