pol·y·se·mous

(pŏl′ē-sē′məs)

adj.

Having or characterized by many meanings, as the words play and table.

[From Late Latin polysēmus, from Greek polusēmos : polu-, poly- + sēma, sign.]

pol′y·se′my (pŏl′ē-sē′mē, pə-lĭs′ə-) n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

polysemy

(ˌpɒlɪˈsiːmɪ; pəˈlɪsəmɪ)

(Linguistics) the existence of several meanings in a single word. Compare monosemy

[C20: from New Latin polysēmia, from Greek polusēmos having many meanings, from poly- + sēma a sign]

ˌpolyˈsemous, polysemic, polyseme adj

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

pol•y•se•my

(ˈpɒl iˌsi mi, pəˈlɪs ə mi)

n.

diversity of meanings.

[< French polysémie (1897) < Late Latin polysēm(us) with many meanings (< Greek polýsēmos)]

pol`y•se′mous, adj.

polysemy

a diversity of meanings for a given word.

polysemy

[pɒˈlɪsəmɪ] N → polisemia f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

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References in periodicals archive

Word-formation studies often speak in this regard of "polysemy" or "affixal polysemy".

Interconnectedness and variation of meaning in derivational patterns

Rules-based and model-based approaches like NLP, which operate on a keyword level, cannot take into account polysemy and synonymy.

The importance of concepts: Harnessing content management is the next generation in technology for publishing, writes Manisha Bolina

They cover categories and constructions in context, teaching construal and viewpoint, and polysemy. Among their topics are second-language constructions and interactional competence: subordination and coordination in English second-language learning, optional that in complementation by German and Spanish learners, using blending theory to teach English conditionals, making sense of the definite article through a pedagogical schematic, and polysemy and conceptual metaphors: a cognitive linguistics approach to vocabulary learning.

What is Applied Cognitive Linguistics? Answers from Current SLA Research

89) because of "profusion" and "polysemy"--the sheer volume of messages and the variation in how they are interpreted.

The Digital Difference: Media Technology and Theory of Communication Effects

This is something that the pussy-hat protestors of the 2017 Women's March also understood, seizing upon the unruly polysemy of words and images to tactically disrupt the language wielded to degrade and abuse women, reclaiming it as a symbol of solidarity and empowerment.

Judy Chicago: JESSICA SILVERMAN GALLERY

Secondly, the initial cluster centers are randomly generated, thus the clustering results are unstable and susceptible to noise data points, which lead to the ambiguity of visual words [7], which lies in two areas: synonymy and polysemy. Moreover, the traditional BoVW model suffers from another main problem is the loss of spatial information when representing the images as histograms of quantized features and suffers limited accuracy [8].

Object classification based on weakly supervised E2LSH and saliency map weighting

The task of the public intellectual is to tease out the polysemy of AlDub and craft an alternative discourse.

3 ways to watch 'AlDub'

The play of polysemy here is not solely, or even primarily, the manifestation of a commonplace aesthetic.

Dawn Lundy Martin, Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life