Talk:Polysemy

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Frenchling.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:56, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Bank

Isn't the 'security' definition of bank related to the river bank origins? The bank is the thing that stops the river spilling out?

Another potential relation for the two meanings of bank (financial institution and river bank) is the notion of collection or accrual. Funds are entrusted to a bank where one hopes to accrue additional funds over time. River banks are formed by the collection or accrual of sedimentary deposits. In fact, it seems kind of obvious that they are related given that both a financial institution and a river bank accept deposits. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.195.3.17 (talk) 16:20, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Another relation of the two bank definitions mentioned that is verified in reference 15 (Etymonline) is the Proto-Germanic cognate for "shelf" (*bankiz). The bank of a river is typically visually shelf-like in its flatness (though still gently sloping) unless there is abnormal soil erosion in the area; this relates to the counter tops at which bank tellers interact with customers which are flat, long shelves. However, this relation breaks down when considering the verb "to bank" (as in "He banked the plane sharply to the right"); would "bank" as a verb be considered a polyseme as well? If so, the verb would likely support the etymology of Proto-Germanic *bangkon ("Slope"), as a banked turn is defined as a turn requiring a vehicle/aircraft to tilt or slope sideways Noun 3b, Intransitive Verb 2 Frenchling (talk) 01:05, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I wrote that the financial Italian loanword and the native English river bank might be considered homonyms today but ultimately they are polysemous since they come from the same Proto-Germanic word.217.214.152.232 (talk) 01:26, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Hebdige

Why is there a reference to Hebdige 1979, 117) and no listing of what this might be referring to at the bottom? There is also no list of Hebdige articles or publications at his main page either. Euthydemos 17:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It is cited in Middleton. Hyacinth 11:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

How do you pronounce this word? If anyone knows, that would be great. --74.104.225.38 23:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

m-w.com "polysemy".--Loodog 02:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --74.104.224.144 01:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, my IP address changed. Same person. --74.104.224.144 01:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

the second paragraph in the intro is a bit strange

The sentence paragraph in the intro, discussing an interpretation whereby polysemy creates infinite meanings and "'position[s] subjects' within a process of semiosis" seems like a rather specific application of the term. Polysemy itself simply means words (or other such things) with multiple meanings, while this seems to be a particular interpretation of what that implies that's current in some areas, but not others. Linguists, for example, would generally not recognize Hebdige and Middleton's description of polysemy as applicable to the sense in which they use the term. And indeed the rest of the article is about the linguistic sense, making this thing at the top rather out of place. --Delirium 00:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree. I'm not sure even whether such a specific (and not very widespread, it seems) conception of polysemy should be mentioned here at all; see WP:Undue weight. — mark ✎ 10:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I do think the concept of polysemy has currency in literary theory with some sort of meaning along those lines, so I don't object to mentioning it, so long as it's not implied that this is what everyone uses the word to mean, rather than specifically literary theorists (and maybe some semioticians?). I don't know enough about its use there to know whether the two people quoted are particularly notable or representative, though. --Delirium 17:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Words with Multiple Meanings

I work in reading education, and the phrase "words with multiple meanings" often pops up alongise "homographs." While your average linguist might know to look up the work "polysemy," I doubt the average school board member or reading teacher knows this word. When searching for "words with multiple meanings" or "multiple meaning words," the page for Polysemy did not even appear in search results.

Is it possible to make the identity of this page more easily searchable to the lay-person? I had to use a Google plug-in to find this article.

Thank you for working to make Wikipedia the resource that it is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.45.18.38 (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Check

Cheque/check is from the Arabic "sakk", referring to a piece of paper that can be used as money. The name of the game of chess is Farsi/Arabic "the Shah (king) is dead". In this sense "check", in the sense of "stop", is a fairly important meaning and in modern English is probably as common in sports, e.g. football (body-check), as anywhere else. Pamour (talk) 10:27, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Zeugma example?

The section on zeugma would be much clearer with an example. Is it saying that the fact that "At the auction, the robot got coffee but no bids" sounds more arresting than "At the auction, the robot got coffee and snacks" or "At the auction, the robot got attention but no bids" means that the "attract" and "fetch" meanings of "get" are polysemous? 189.132.5.201 (talk) 15:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Replace the Mole example?

I don't think "mole" is as good an example as could be found. We ask the reader to have a look at the Mole (disambiguation) page to see an example of a Mole (the animal Saxons called "Moldewarp" or "dirt-tosser", and other meanings based on that (Marsupial mole, Golden mole, Mole (espianage) etc. But the noun modifier "mole-like" or "subterranian" as in Mole Rat or Mole cricket are not found on that page. Also, there are many meanings which have nothing to do with the animal mole, Mole (sause), Mole (skin blemish), and most searched of all Mole (unit) seem to use that word just by coincidence. So it's not a good example because some of the "moldewarp-derived" meanings are not represented there, some which are not so derived are there. Should another example replace it? Chrisrus (talk) 06:13, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to User talk:Anonymous Dissident for improving this situation. Please see the above my post from last October. "Mole" should not be used at all because it's both a common homonym and a common polysemic word. Mole the common animal and mole the common blemish are homonyms, but mole the animal, and mole the spy, and mole meaning subterranian and such are polysemic, so the example could be better chosen. Please, let's replace mole with another example which is not also a common homonym. Chrisrus (talk) 05:57, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Replaced the merely homonymous examples (blemish, number of molecules) by ones with related meanings, digging machine and undercover spy.CharlesHBennett (talk) 03:52, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Day

Day is suppose to represent the period of a full planetary rotation, and is also used to represent a period of time when the sun is above the horizon. I haven't seen this mentioned at all and it seems to be a very common example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by B.beckman (talk • contribs) 08:58, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Baddest idea?

Do the various slang cases used for the more-or-less precise opposite of the standard meaning produce polysemy? E.g., bad, wicked, ill, sick, in the 21st, monstrous (as in "a monstrous fine woman, egad") in Regency England, etc.?

If not, is there a more applicable technical term? GeorgeTSLC (talk) 19:49, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Also wondering this: is there a special term for a polyseme with contradictory meanings? Not just for slang inversions, though... for example, two of the definitions of the word "belie" are completely contradictory: it can mean to conceal a fact, or to expose a lie (among utterly too many other things). (71.233.204.242 (talk) 02:55, 28 July 2017 (UTC))

• I'm wondering the same. I'm writing an essay about misunderstanding and such a concept needs a name! "Contradictory polysemy" works I suppose, but I'd rather a single word, because it is such a common thing. I might ask on the English stackexchange. -- Thennicke (talk) 03:28, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

monosemy

Shouldn't the sentence in the intro paragraph, 'Polysemy is distinct from homosemy, where a word has a single meaning', refer to monosemy rather than homosemy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7C:D22E:2800:4C2:3628:5AA1:C2BE (talk) 23:37, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Moved to "talk:monosemy#list of monosemous languages." Nicole Sharp (talk) 05:08, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Reference Link Issues

Reference #2, connected to Oxford Dictionaries Online, does not directly take the user to the definition for polysemy but rather to the home page of Oxford Dictionaries Online, likely because the link was not to the archived page at the time.

References #6 - #12 links also do not work; #6 has a link that leads to a website's 404 page, whereas the other #7 - #12 are not clickable links due to being ref tags instead of cite tags. When attempting to copy and paste the doi links for these references, I still was unable to get them to work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frenchling (talk • contribs) 01:19, 8 September 2016 (UTC)