crossmeaning

Crossmeaning is a term used in linguistics and semiotics to describe a phenomenon in which a linguistic form is associated with multiple meanings that traverse linguistic or semantic boundaries. It is used to analyze how words acquire and share senses across languages (cross-linguistic crossmeaning) as well as how meanings diversify across domains within a single language (cross-domain polysemy).

Within and across languages, crossmeaning highlights connections among senses that can create translation challenges and inform semantic networks. It is distinct from simple polysemy, which concerns multiple senses within one language, and from homonymy, which involves different words that happen to write or sound alike.

Examples of crossmeaning include cross-linguistic false friends, such as English gift versus German Gift meaning poison, which can mislead learners. In English, bank simultaneously means a financial institution and the land beside a river, illustrating cross-domain senses within one form. Metaphorical extensions also yield cross-meaning links, such as bright meaning both luminous and clever.

Research on crossmeaning uses bilingual corpora, translation studies, and semantic networks to map sense correspondences, identify potential misinterpretations, and improve machine translation and lexicography.

Related concepts include polysemy, homonymy, false friends, semantic networks, and translation equivalence.