Word Of The Day

Polysemy:

Polysemy (/pəˈlɪsɪmi/ or /ˈpɒlɪˌsmi/; from Ancient Greek πολύ- (polý-) ‘many’, and σῆμα (sêma) ‘sign’) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from monosemy, where a word has a single meaning. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The race to extract an Indigenous language from its last lucid speaker,” Simeon Tegel, WaPo:

Over time, Campos, who communicates with Zariquiey in both Iskonawa and Spanish, has managed to share much of this frequently onomatopoeic tongue from the Panoan family of languages of the Western Amazon. It’s heavy with polysemy — words with multiple meanings — and notable for allowing users to stack multiple verbs one atop the other.

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Former BBS operator; software engineer; cat lackey.

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