polysemos

Polysemos is a linguistic term used to describe the phenomenon of polysemy, in which a single lexeme—such as a word or morpheme—has multiple related senses. In this usage, the different meanings share a common semantic core, often arising through metaphorical extension or specialization over time.

Polysemos is less common in modern usage; scholars typically use polysemy as the name of the phenomenon and polysemous as the adjective. The term emphasizes that the senses are connected by underlying relationships rather than being mere coincidences of form.

Distinction from homonymy: polysemy involves related senses with a historical linkage, whereas homonymy involves unrelated meanings that are often the result of semantic shift or coincidental phonetic similarity. Understanding this distinction helps linguists model how meanings evolve and how speakers navigate ambiguity in real time.

Examples frequently cited in discussions of polysemos include bank (financial institution vs. riverbank), foot (body part vs. base or bottom of something), and bright (shining and clever). These senses share a core conceptual thread—light, boundary, or prominence—even as their specific uses diverge.

In linguistic analysis and natural language processing, recognizing polysemos senses supports more accurate word sense disambiguation, bilingual translation, and semantic parsing. Lexical resources and corpora often annotate polysemous senses and track how meanings shift across contexts and languages. See also polysemy, polysemous, homonymy, and word sense disambiguation.