A more restrictive or technical definition sees homonyms as words that are simultaneously homographs and homophones – that is to say they have identical pronunciation and spelling, whilst maintaining different meanings. Examples are the pair stalk (part of a plant) and stalk (follow/harass a person) and the pair left (past tense of leave) and left (opposite of right).
A distinction is sometimes made between true homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate (glide on ice) and skate (the fish), and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) and mouth (of an animal).
The relationship between a set of homonyms is called homonymy, and the associated adjective is homonymous.
Polysemy
A polyseme is a word or phrase with different, but related senses.
Since the test for polysemy is the vague concept of the relatedness,
judgments of polysemy can be difficult to make. Because applying
pre-existing words to new situations is a natural process of language
change, looking at words' etymology
is helpful in determining polysemy but not the only solution; as words
become lost in etymology, what once was a useful distinction of meaning
may no longer be so. Some apparently unrelated words share a common
historical origin, however, so etymology is not an infallible test for
polysemy, and dictionary writers also often defer to speakers'
intuitions to judge polysemy in cases where it contradicts etymology.
English has many polysemous words. For example, the verb "to get" can
mean "procure" (I'll get the drinks), "become" (she got scared), "understand" (I get it) etc.
A
polysemous lexeme has several (apparently) related meanings. The noun
head, for instance, seems to have related meanings when we speak of the
head of a person, the head of a company, head of a table or bed, a head
of lettuce or cabbage. If we take the anatomical referent as the basic
one, the other meanings can be seen as derived from the basic one,
either reflecting the general shape of the human head or, more
abstractly, the relation of the head to the rest of the body.
The word good in the following twoexamples. In one case it’s a moral judgement, in the other case it’s a judgement of skill:
John was a good man. (He donated a lot of money to charity.)
Bill was a good painter. (His drawings always were excitingto look at.)
