Do You Know A Word Could Have More Than ONE Meaning? (READ MORE)

williams-owb (58)in #steemiteducation • 7 years ago (edited)

Felix was introduced to a club recently by a friend and one of the criteria for being a member is that he must own a black club and a bow. Interestingly, every single member of the club is single. The new members are expected to bow to show respect to the senior members of the club at every meeting.

The expressions above may get you puzzled and confused if you don’t understand the basics of English Language. Fear not! I have got you covered. I will explain in detailed what occurred in the expressions and what each means.

First Sentence

I was introduced to a club (1) recently by a friend and one of the criteria for being a member is that I must own a black club (2) and a bow(1).

Club (1) means an association of members joining together for some common purpose.

Club (2) means a heavy stick intended for use as a weapon

Bow (1) means a weapon made of a curved piece of wood or flexible materials whose ends are connected by a string, used for shooting arrows.

Second Sentence

Interestingly, every single (1) member of the club is single (2)

Single (1) means one numerically

Single (2) means unmarried

Third sentence

The new members are expected to bow (2) to show respect to the senior members of the club.

Bow(2) means to bow forward at the waist in respect

That explains every bit of the expressions above. You would notice that a single word can have different meanings. Still confused? Read till the end to get the full dosage (smiles)

Next, I will explain the concept of Semantics and Homonymy – it would be clearer after I have dealt with these concepts.

So,

What is Semantics?

Semantics is a branch of Linguistics which studies how meaning in language is produced or created. Semantics is simply the study of meaning. It explains how morphemes, words, phrases and sentences come together to make meaning in language.

Semantics is vital to the development of language – it helps to curb the problem of ambiguity and vagueness in language. So many words are related in terms of orthography or spelling but they have different meanings – isn’t that amazing.

I don’t think communication is possible without the intention to pass across an information or message that will be meaningful to the other interlocutors. The study of meaning in Linguistics is at the core of communication in language, very important. For instance, take a look at these sentences below:

(1.) James was right to turn to the right side of mall

(2.) The old man died inside the house because he forgot to arm the fire alarm with his arm.

(3.) Can I get a can of cold drinks?

Did you see anything strange in the sentences above? Did you notice the fact that some of the words in the sentences above have the same orthography/spelling and the same pronunciation, but they have different meanings? Often times, words can be used amazingly. These are just few out of the many words with the same spelling and pronunciation that have different meanings. We may not be able to decipher what each word mean or understand each other during the process of communication if the concept of Semantics was not discovered.

In situations where different unrelated senses or meanings are shared under same surface form of words, it is referred to as HOMONYMY. Homonymy, an aspect of sense or word relations in semantics is defined as a situation of identical spelling or pronunciation but with different unrelated meanings. In other words, two or more words are homonyms if they either sound the same (homophones), have the same spelling (homographs), or both, but do not have related meanings. In homonymy, a lot of emphasis is on ‘Unrelated meanings’ (there are other sense relations but our focus is on homonymy for the purpose of this post).

Here are more examples on Homonymy

Word	Meaning 1	Meaning 2
Address	manner of speaking	direction of place of residence
Bark	explosive sound by dogs	exterior covering of tree
Bar	of chocolate	room where drinks are sold
Cue	a tool	hint
Pose	to ask a question	to model
Shady	to practice deceit	to give cover from sunlight
Bank	financial institution	edge of river or lake
Bind	unite or tie together	tough situation
head	someone in charge	part of the body
Stamp	to walk on with pressure	postage
Figure	to estimate	physique
Minute	time	small or little