Polysemy

Polysemy (from "poly-", many, and the Greek "sema", meaning), in linguistics occurs when a word or linguistic sign has several meanings.

Examples

• Cape:
  1. (male) Land tip that enters the sea.
  2. (male/female) Military scaffolding.
  3. (male) Catch in nautical jargon.
• Cresta:
  1. Part of the body of some animals that grows generally on the head.
  2. Summit of a wave.
  3. A mountain summit.
  4. A wave summit.
• Cat:
  1. Animal of the feline family.
  2. Tool to lift heavy objects.
  3. Native dance of Uruguay and Argentina.
  4. Game type.
  5. Cried.

• Bank:

1. Type of chair.
2. Financial institution.

• Sierra:
  1. Tool for cutting wood or other hard objects, which usually consists of a striped steel sheet subject to a grip.
  2. Set of aligned mountains (the set of a saw is called a system).
  3. Fish type.

Origin

Polysemy can be produced by many different causes:

• Change of application: Throughout history, the reality to which a word refers has changed shape or has passed to a new reference.

For example, the word Key, initially applied to musical instruments, has then been applied to writing machines and finally to any mobile piece that can be pressed.

• Specialization in a social environment: In the technical language of a particular profession or in a particular social stratum, the word can acquire a specialized meaning.

For example, mass to which a baker refers is not the mass to which one refers a mason who speaks with his pawn, and none of these two is the mass the teacher who explains a kind of physics to his students.

• Figured language: Speakers name objects through metaphorical terms (speakers)♪ to name the chair) or metonymic (Drink. to name the wine).
• Reinterpreted Homonimos: Two homonymous words with similar meanings, whose etymology has been lost, can be considered a single polysemic word in the head of the speakers.

For example, the word Reja has two different etymologies: one for the Reja the plow and the other for the window straightened.

• Foreign influence: By semantic limestone, a word in Spanish can acquire meanings that this word has in a foreign language.

For example, by English influence, the word event has acquired the meaning of event

Other phenomena of meaning

Homonymous words are those that are pronounced the same, but their spelling is different, as well as their meaning.

• had/tube: it had a form of verb having and tube a noun. Example: I had very bad luck in the test - My dog doesn't go inside that tube, it's too big.
• be/aya: there is a verb form or a noun and a noun. Example: I wish it had not rained - Mary is my aya, since she is responsible for the care and education of my children.

Synonymy

Two or more different words with the same meaning:

• Pig, cochino, gorrino, marrano, puerco, guarro, chancho etc.