Definitions
Wiktionary
- adj. linguistics Having a number of meanings, interpretations or understandings.
Examples
“I'm not acquainted with literary theory, and my academic training is in the rather different fields of hard science and history (where the words "polysemic" and "phatic" are not often used), so when I read books like this I am not really looking to participate in the intellectual debate that the author may want to have.”
“In fact, a nonlinear reading would be in keeping with the transdisciplinary intellectual habits of the studioli patrons and artists, complementing the polysemic nature of the studioli compositions.”
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro
“The verb kana is polysemic, a feature which has allowed the by-now-discredited translation “to acquire” instead of the less theologically palatable “to create.””
“His statement about the nature of religious truth is worth keeping in mind to instill humility in those of us who are religious believers: "Religion is truth-claiming, though the truth is particularly vague, polysemic, and hard to describe" p.221.”
Keith Ward, Big Questions in Science and Religion 9: Has Science Made Belief in God Obsolete?
“In Bes'z the word "right" is polysemic enough to evade the peremptory meaning he intended.”
“She also uses the polysemic figure of "Minerva's rent veil" as a symbol of Greece's fall.”
The Ruins of Empire: Nationalism, Art, and Empire in Hemans's Modern Greece
“A more widely used terminology today distinguishes monosemic and polysemic words.”
“It may just be a question of translation of the greek word many of which are terribly polysemic.”
“Moreover, all these wannabe startups fall suspiciously silent when you start talking about stuff like latent semantic indexing and polysemic hierarchies.”
“Sure, he provides plenty of linguistic examples of the types of mappings metaphorical, metonymical, polysemic, etc., and even the types of inferences made, but no description of how any of this occurs.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘polysemic’.
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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work these into conversation
Challenge!
legerdemain, polysemic, rupestrian, callipygian, oscitancy, numen, lucubration, asperity, amalgam, apposite, wastrel, eleemosynary and 208 more...
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bintalshamsa's list
My Favorite Words
weltschmerz, perspicacity, idée fixe, invigilator, salubrious, tchotchke, ex nihilo, invidious, malapropism, naïve, sardonic, elide and 1401 more...
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litigious semantics
ad unguem, abeyance, choleric, contentious, curmudgeonly, churlish, dictatorial, vindictive, dogmatic, truculent, mutinous, refractory and 254 more...
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learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
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conglomeration
wherewithal, wan, zoonotic, zoonosis, nebulous, nefarious, nascent, quiescent, quell, undercroft, unwitting, unutterable and 658 more...
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Valse's Words
fastidious, fervent, bellicose, personification, onomatopoeia, burly, concomitant, tempura, serendipity, pecuniary, foment, chum and 418 more...
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emily_morine's Words
crepuscular, troglodyte, archipelago, fjord, homunculus, lazuli, vivisection, encroach, meretricious, meniscus, doppelganger, ablution and 57 more...
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Contemporary Communication Theory
pluralism, epistemology, aphorism, maxim, conation, dystopia, typology, pedagogy, positivism, modernism, polysemic, panoptic and 36 more...
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my thesis advisor eats a page of the ...
words used by a professor of mine this past semester that i rather enjoy, for one reason or another
binary, bifurcate, oneiric, psychopomp, polysemic, caveat, apodictic, vituperative, invective, spurious, cathexis, recondite and 2 more...
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Winters's Words
endogenous, serendipitous, sundry, incongruous, impudent, imperious, zeitgeist, imbroglio, hermeneutic, immutable, genealogical, labile and 37 more...
Tweets
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