What are words that have another meaning called?

Many words Have various meanings and, therefore, we must take into account the context of the sentence or phrase to fully understand what it is about. Something that, obviously, is easier in written language than in spoken language.

Examples abound. Bank can refer to a type of location, a financial institution, or a group of fish. Wine can be an alcoholic drink or the third person past tense of the verbvenire (has come).

Knowing some of these words and knowing how to differentiate them from other similar phenomena in the language avoids confusion and helps you manage yourself better. Castilian.

What are words that have another meaning called?

Second Royal Spanish AcademyTHE polysemy It is the “plurality of meanings of a word or any linguistic sign”. The Spanish Urgent Foundation (Fundéu) describes it as “the phenomenon by which the same word, with a single origin, can have different meanings whose morphological and syntagmatic functioning does not vary (the latter means that its grammatical category does not change nor the syntactic functions that can perform). )”.

It can then be said, adds Fundéu, that “it is a word that has come to have, for contextual reasons, more often than not, different meaningsso that all these meanings are its various meanings.”

In the dictionary it is quite easy to recognize the polysemous words: They present a single entry that lists the different meanings acquired during their evolution. Fundéu adds that “one element that distinguishes them is that, even if they are distant or difficult to see, the meanings are all linked to each other and there is a logic that explains these meanings”.

It is worth highlighting a type of polysemy in which one word has two opposite meanings, enantiosemia or autoantonyms. Fundéu says that “the origin of enantiosemia is often in a figure called antiphrase, by which people or things are designated with words that mean the opposite of what they should be said, and with ironic uses. And he clarifies that “given the clear contrast of meanings, it rarely causes ambiguity”.

Three classic examples of enantiosemiathe verb to rent, which means both to rent and to take on rent, the verb to communicate, which means to give or receive Holy Communion, or the verb to sanction, which applies both to approve and to punish.

The fundamental difference between polysemy and homonymy It is in the origin of words, that is, in their etymology.

Homonymous words have different etymologies while the polysemous word has the same origin, whose meaning has diversified over time. In other words, the homonymous words were and continue to be different words that coincided in their form; The so-called polysemous words are actually a single word that has acquired different meaningsbetween which there is a significant relationship.

As we will see with the word boot, although at first glance it may seem like a case of polysemy, in reality it is a case of homonymy, since each definition has a etymology different and, in the dictionary, we can perceive them because each belongs to an independent entry.

• 1. boot (from the late Latin buttis, wineskin): small leather glued to the inside and sewn along the edges, which ends with a neck with a rim of horn, wood or other material, mainly intended to contain wine.

• 2. boot (from the French barrel). Footwear, generally made of leather, which protects the foot and part of the leg.

• 3. boto, boot (from the Gothic bauth, dull). adj. smooth