FOR THE MATTER OF POLYSEMY IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Abstract

Polysemy is a linguistic term referring to the phenomenon where a single word or phrase has multiple related meanings. The multiple meanings are listed under one entry in a dictionary. If one word expressed only one meaning, the dictionary would be extremely large. Polysemy derives from the Greek words ‘poly’ (meaning 'many') and ‘sēma’ (meaning 'sign'). Some words have more than one meaning. Because of this, we say that polysemy makes the language more diverse and interesting. The multiple meaning of the word, first of all, makes us think about the context, promotes figurative and symbolic thinking, creates a fertile ground for understanding. Polysemy is highly developed in English language. Most English words are polysemantic. It is quite a difficult problem to distinguish polysemantic words from homonyms. Unlike a polysemantic word, which either has one central (primary) meaning and includes other meanings, or a component common to all meanings is singled out, homonyms are completely random, their meanings have nothing to do with each other. Polysemy illustrates a single word with many related meanings (one dictionary entry), e.g., get - receive, bring, travel / move. Homonymy is about words that have different meanings and multiple dictionary entries but are spelled and/or pronounced the same, e.g. rose - a flower & increased.