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English Vocabulary in Use Advance (Unit 91: One word, many meanings)


A. Polysemy

A great many words in English have more than one meaning. Linguists call this aspect of vocabulary polysemy.

Look at these sentences and think about how you would translate the words in italics into your own language.

fair
  • It’s only fair that we should share the housework.
  • The Frankfurt Book Fair is a very important event for most publishers.
  • The forecast is for the weather to stay fair for the next week.
  • I’ve got fair skin and burn easily in the sun.
  • His marks in his final exams ranged from excellent to fair.
flat
  • The firefighters managed to save the children from the burning third-floor flat.
  • The countryside round here is terribly flat and boring.
  • To join the Fitness Club, you pay a flat fee of £500.
  • The sonata is in B flat minor.
  • She finished the exercise in five minutes flat.
capital
  • Fill in the form in capital letters.
  • Wellington is the capital of New Zealand.
  • You need plenty of capital to open a restaurant.
  • Capital punishment has been abolished in many countries.
mean
  • What does ‘coagulate’ mean?
  • I didn’t mean to hurt you.
  • He’s far too mean to buy her flowers.
  • The mean temperature for July is 25ºC.
  • You shouldn’t be so mean to your little sister.

You probably need a different word to translate fair, flat, capital and mean in each sentence.

Sometimes the meanings are clearly related – flat as in countryside has a connection with flat as in apartment in that they both include an idea of being on one level. Sometimes, however, there is no connection at all. For example, the meaning of fair as in Book Fair has no obvious connection with any of the other meanings of fair. Words like this can be called homographs (words with the same spellings but different meanings).

B. Being aware of polysemy

It is useful to be aware of polysemy in English for several reasons.
  • • You need to remember that the meaning you first learnt for a word may not be the one that it has in a new context.
  • • You need to be aware that in English, words can sometimes be used as different parts of speech. Flat with its apartment meaning, for instance, can become an adjective, e.g. a set of flat keys.
  • • Learning about the range of meanings that a word can have can help you to learn several meanings for the price of one.
  • • It will also help you to understand jokes in English, as these are often based on polysemous words.

Language help

The context of a word with multiple meanings will usually make it absolutely clear which of the word’s possible meanings is intended. So you can understand what, for example, the noun drill probably means in (a) a dental context, (b) an army context, (c) a road-building context, or (d) a languagelearning context.
Exercise-91.1


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