How language expresses meaning. Particular word definitions remain in Vocabulary.
Test your knowledge with these top questions!
Which term describes English words like "bat" that share spelling but differ in meaning?
A wooden bat and a flying bat share spelling by coincidence, with unrelated word histories.
Which English word sounds different in "a lead pipe" and "to lead a parade"?
"Lead" names the metal as "led" and the guiding action as "leed," despite identical spelling.
Which English word names both a flower and the past tense of "rise"?
Flower "rose" comes from Latin rosa, while past-tense "rose" comes from Old English risan.
What did the English word "nice" originally mean?
The word comes from Latin nescius, meaning ignorant, and its meaning improved over centuries from silly to pleasant.
What term describes a single word with multiple related meanings?
Polysemy covers words like "mouth", whose face and river senses share the idea of an opening.
What did the English word "silly" originally mean?
The word moved step by step from blessed to innocent to foolish, a classic case of meaning getting worse.
Which English trio sounds alike but differs in spelling and meaning?
"Too" adds or agrees, "to" points direction, and "two" names the number after one.
Which word pair illustrates homonymy rather than polysemy?
The flying bat and the hitting bat come from different roots, so their shared spelling is coincidence.
What do linguists call sentences like "The horse raced past the barn fell"?
Readers first parse raced as the main verb, then must reanalyze it once fell reveals the true structure.
What did the English word "awful" originally describe?
Awful once expressed both dread and reverential respect; its everyday "very bad" sense emerged by the late 1700s.