<P> Charles Fillmore and Beryl Atkins' definition stipulates three elements: (i) the various senses of a polysemous word have a central origin, (ii) the links between these senses form a network, and (iii) understanding the' inner' one contributes to understanding of the' outer' one . </P> <P> Polysemy is a pivotal concept within disciplines such as media studies and linguistics . The analysis of polysemy, synonymy, and hyponymy and hypernymy is vital to taxonomy and ontology in the information - science senses of those terms . It has applications in pedagogy and machine learning, because they rely on word - sense disambiguation and schemas . </P> <P> A polyseme is a word or phrase with different, but related senses . Since the test for polysemy is the vague concept of relatedness, judgments of polysemy can be difficult to make . Because applying pre-existing words to new situations is a natural process of language change, looking at words' etymology is helpful in determining polysemy but not the only solution; as words become lost in etymology, what once was a useful distinction of meaning may no longer be so . Some apparently unrelated words share a common historical origin, however, so etymology is not an infallible test for polysemy, and dictionary writers also often defer to speakers' intuitions to judge polysemy in cases where it contradicts etymology . English has many polysemous words . For example, the verb "to get" can mean "procure" (I'll get the drinks), "become" (she got scared), "understand" (I get it) etc . </P> <P> In vertical polysemy a word refers to a member of a subcategory (e.g.,' dog' for' male dog'). A closely related idea is metonymy, in which a word with one original meaning is used to refer to something else connected to it . </P>

Term for a word that has two meanings