polysemous
- adjective
- /ˌpɒlɪˈsiːməs/
- Specialized
:
polisémico
- Most notable is John Fiske's theory that texts are polysemous, open to both dominant and oppositional readings.
- polysemous words
Examples
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Here I discuss how postmodern picturebooks can facilitate the development of a polysemous understanding of the nature of stories and the multiple ways that they can be written, represented, and told.
Academic text (2014) -
As these archetypes reappear and are used in polysemous ways, the modes therefore operate synchronically.
Academic text (1992) -
"Discourse" is a polysemous term, but I use it to mean the language of Imagism for the purposes of this article.
Academic text (2004) -
As a kind of lead weight, history requires work, and when the work is done, the history is sufficiently polysemous to energize many unconscious elaborations.
Academic text (2007) -
The plural form of art, arts, is likewise polysemous: sometimes it refers to a whole range of "makings," as in fine arts, mechanical arts, and crafts; sometimes it refers to the material base of different arts; for example, arts of metal, stone, wood, and clay.
Academic text (1994) -
It only provides the stuff of speech, that is, general laws of syntax and a lexicon, all of them "improper": on the level of grammar, the laws remain general, the words polysemous.
Academic text (1994) -
Picturebooks with metafictive devices are ideal for rereading and revisiting by both teachers and students, as the polysemous texts afford multiple opportunities for meaning-making and interpretation.
Academic text (2014) -
When they write about music, students tend to overuse the vocabulary words they know, are too general and singular in their descriptions, blur meanings with polysemous words, use words in the wrong context, and, though they may possess a large musical vocabulary, struggle with connecting concepts together to build better descriptive phrases.
Academic text (2011) -
The word polysemous describes terms that have multiple meanings, which can lead to various interpretations.
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In linguistics, a polysemous word can convey different ideas depending on its context.
Synonyms
68
6.3
Not clear because it can have more than one meaning
Having several different meanings
Having many possible meanings for different people
Having several different voices or points of view
Compounds
How Polysemous
- Specialized
68
6.3
Surface Forms
Morphology
polysemous = poly + sem + ous
The prefix poly- clearly conveys 'many', but the remaining sem- is a learned combining form rather than a familiar English base, so the meaning is only partly transparent.
Etymology
The word polysemous comes from the Greek parts poly- 'many' and sema 'sign' or 'meaning', and poly- is the same 'many' you see in polygon. So a polysemous word is literally a 'many-meaning' word, a single word that has several different meanings.