POLYSEMY

POLYSEMY

A polyseme the phenomenon of having or being open to several or many meanings.When a word has several very closely related senses or meanings.Polysemous word is a word having two or more meanings. For example, foot in : - He hurt his foot ; - She stood at the foot of the stairs.

A well-known problem in semantics is how to decide whether we are dealing with a single polysemous word or with two or more homonyms.
F.R.Palmer concluded saying that finally multiplicity of meaning is a very general characteristic of language.Polysemy is used in semantics and lexical analysis to describe the word with multiple meanings.Crystal and Dick Hebdige (1979) also defined polysemy.Lexical ambiguity depends upon homonymy and polysemy.

The difference between homonyms and polysemes is subtle. Lexicographers define polysemes within a single dictionary lemma, numbering different meanings, while homonyms are treated in separate lemmata. Semantic shift can separate a polysemous word into separate homonyms. For example, check as in "bank check" (or Cheque) , check in chess, and check meaning "verification" are considered homonyms, while they originated as a single word derived from chess in the 14th century.

Reference: http://www.yourdictionary.com/polysemy