polissemia

Polissemia, commonly known in English as polysemy, is the linguistic phenomenon in which a single word form has two or more related senses. The various meanings share a common core concept and remain semantically connected, distinguishing polysemy from homonymy, where multiple senses are unrelated and may arise from separate origins.

Polysemous relations typically arise through processes such as metaphor, metonymy, specialization, or broadening and narrowing of usage over time. At the synchronic level, a lexeme can maintain a network of related senses that extend from a central meaning, with some senses appearing more concrete or more abstract than others. Etymology often explains the path of semantic extension, but many polysemous relations are best understood through descriptive analysis of usage in context.

Common examples cited in linguistics include words like bank, which can refer to a financial institution or the side of a river; head, meaning the upper part of the body as well as a leading or chief person or the source of something; and set, which can denote a collection, an act of placing, or something that is fixed or firm. Each of these senses is historically related to the others through metaphorical or conventional extension of meaning, rather than through completely separate origins.

In lexicography and natural language processing, recognizing polysemy is essential for accurate sense disambiguation and for building useful dictionaries and semantic databases. In psycholinguistics, polysemy influences real-time processing, with context guiding which sense of a word is activated. Polissemia thus reflects the flexible, context-dependent nature of meaning in language.