polisemiei

Polisemia, or polysemy, is a linguistic phenomenon in which a single lexical item has multiple related senses. The different meanings of a polysemous word share a core semantic component and typically expand, contract, or shift in use through processes such as metaphor or metonymy. This contrasts with homonymy, where a single form has unrelated meanings with distinct origins.

Polysemy arises through semantic extension, narrowing, and figurative transfer. Core senses provide a base from which related meanings diverge, often via metaphorical mapping or metonymic association. For example, a word like bank can denote a financial institution as well as a riverbank; these senses are linked through a historical and cognitive thematic core related to a place of stored value or boundary. Other common examples include mouth (the oral cavity and the opening of a river or cave) and head (the top of the body and the leading or foremost part of something). The relation between senses can be tight or more distant, but there is typically some conceptual continuity.

In lexicography and linguistics, polysemy is a central consideration in sense inventories and word sense disambiguation. Dictionaries often enumerate multiple senses under a single lemma, with usage notes clarifying context. In natural language processing, resolving polysemy requires context to identify the intended sense, affecting machine translation, information retrieval, and semantic parsing. Across languages, polysemy is common, and translations must select the appropriate sense to convey the intended meaning accurately.