| polyseme |
| Definition: A word that has multiple meanings. |
| Example: The OED has 30 different definitions for the noun sign. |
| Etymology: The word derives from the Greek poly, many + sema, sign. |
| Oxford English Dictionary: Its first OED citation is from 1953: "Identifications of this type are … most convincing when parallel translation-pairs are found as homonyms within a single language, which one would then wish to consider as polysemes." (Trans. Philol. Soc. 60) |