polysemy

English

Etymology

From polyseme +‎ -y.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈpɒ.lɪ.siː.mi/, /pəˈlɪ.sɪ.mi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

polysemy (usually uncountable, plural polysemies)

1. (semantics) The quality characteristic of a polyseme, a sign (such as a word or symbol) that has multiple meanings (senses), often including multiple similar ones.

   Antonym: monosemy

   Hypernym: colexification

   Hyponyms: (linear types) autohyponymy, autohypernymy, autosuperordination, automeronymy, autoholonymy

   Coordinate terms: homonymy; homosemy

   • 2011, Brigitte Nerlich, Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meaning in Mind and Language, page 3:

     Fifty years ago the linguist and semanticist Stephen Ullmann wrote that polysemy, the fact that some words have a network of multiple but related meanings, is "the pivot of semantic analysis" […]

   • 2017 July 27, Agustín Vicente and Ingrid L. Falkum, “Polysemy”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics‎^[1], Oxford University Press:

     Polysemy proliferates in natural language: Virtually every word is polysemous to some extent.

Related terms

• ambiguity, lexical ambiguity (result of polysemy)
• polysemic (adjective)
• polysemous (adjective)
• polysemously (adverb)

Translations

ability to have multiple meanings

• Albanian: polisemi (sq) f
• Arabic: تَعَدُّدُ مَعَانٍ m (taʕaddudu maʕānin)
• Armenian: բազմիմաստություն (hy) (bazmimastutʻyun)
• Azerbaijani:

  Cyrillic: полисемия

  Latin: polisemiya

• Basque: polisemia
• Belarusian: полісемія f (pólisjemija)
• Breton: liessteriegezh f
• Bulgarian: полисемия f (polisemija)
• Catalan: polisèmia (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 多義性 / 多义性 (do¹ ji⁶ sing³)

  Mandarin: 一詞多義 / 一词多义 (yīcí duōyì), 多義性 / 多义性 (zh) (duōyìxìng)

• Crimean Tatar: çoqmanalılıq
• Czech: polysémie (cs) f
• Danish: polysemi (da) c
• Dutch: polysemie (nl) f
• Esperanto: polisemio
• Finnish: polysemia (fi), monimerkityksisyys (fi)
• French: polysémie (fr) f
• Galician: polisemia (gl) f
• Georgian: პოლისემია (ṗolisemia), მრავალმნიშვენლიანობა (mravalmnišvenlianoba)
• German: Polysemie (de) f, Mehrdeutigkeit (de) f
• Greek: πολυσημία (el) f (polysimía)
• Hungarian: poliszémia (hu)
• Ido: polisemio (io)
• Indonesian: polisemi (id)
• Irish: ilchiallachas m
• Italian: polisemia (it) f
• Japanese: 多義性 (たぎせい, tagisei)
• Kazakh: полисемия (polisemiä)
• Korean: 다의성 (ko) (dauiseong)
• Kyrgyz: полисемия (polisemiya)
• Latvian: polisēmija f
• Lithuanian: polisemija f
• Macedonian: полисемија f (polisemija)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: polysemi m

  Nynorsk: polysemi m

• Persian: چندمعنایی (fa)
• Polish: polisemia (pl) f, wieloznaczność (pl) f
• Portuguese: polissemia (pt) f
• Romanian: polisemie (ro) f
• Russian: полисеми́я (ru) f (polisemíja), многозна́чность (ru) f (mnogoznáčnostʹ)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: полисѐмија f

  Latin: polisèmija (sh) f

• Slovak: polysémia f, mnohoznačnosť f
• Slovene: polisemija f, večpomenskost f
• Sorbian:

  Lower Sorbian: polysemija f

  Upper Sorbian: polysemija f

• Spanish: polisemia (es) f
• Swedish: polysemi (sv) c
• Turkish: çokanlamlılık
• Ukrainian: полісемія f (polisemija), багатозначність (uk) f (bahatoznačnistʹ)
• Uzbek:

  Cyrillic: полисемия (uz) (polisemiya)

  Latin: polisemiya (uz)

• Welsh: amlystyredd m

See also

• homonymy

Further reading

• “polysemy”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.