+60 EXAMPLES of MONOSEMIC words

From classical Greek μόνος, meaning "one" or "only one" and σῆμα "Meaning", the monosemia is defined as the linguistic characteristic adopted by the single meaning words in a language. These words are what we know as "monosemic words."

We underline the fact that these types of words must be of only one meaning in a specific language. For example, that the verb eat in Spanish (from the verb "to eat") it is written the same as the English verb in the infinitive eat ("Come") does not influence the determination of whether this word is monosemic or not, since they belong to different languages. Although, however, I would What, since in Spanish it can be the first person singular of the present indicative of the verb "Eat" and an adverb, and as both meanings of the same word in the same language would not be monosemic.

The monosemic words are the less common within the language, since on many occasions, although they may seem monosemic, many words can adopt different semantic values ​​depending on the context. However, within this classification we find many common words, as well as

technicalities belonging to different areas of knowledge, study, research or work areas. Let's not get confused either, monosemic words can have synonyms, since the same meaning can be given in two different words, regardless of whether they are polysemic or monosemic.

Polysemic words, contrary to monosemic

But well, if there are words with only one meaning that we classify as monosemic, it would be logical to think that there should be words with two or more meanings. And so it is. Words polysemic they would be the opposite of what is presented in monosemia. That is, words that, despite being written and pronounced in the same way (that is, it is the same word) would present different meanings which, normally, would be understood by the sentence context in which they are used. For example, and briefly, a polysemic word could be plant since with it we can refer to:

• The sole of the foot
• The floor of a building (first floor, second floor, ...)
• The production plant of a factory
• The plant as a living plant (the most obvious)

A quick example by way of explanation of monosemic words, and before entering fully into the extensive list of examples, we could consider the word bread, since this only has the meaning of food made from wheat flour (among others). As we said before, bread in English it also has its meaning ("frying pan" or "pot"), but that does not make it polysemic, since in Spanish it only has one meaning.

In what follows we will see examples of monosemic words that will serve as a small sample, since there are many in the Spanish language. The words are:

Bee, steel, olive, acid, acrobat, aquarium, adolescent, water, avocado, chess, garlic, algebra, atom, whale, flag, battle, baby, bibliography, horse, peanut, pan, heat, bed, truck, marble, charcoal, comic, coprolite, cockroach, dance, decree, dedication, army, electric, elephant, bug, broom, fan, philology, flower, photo, geology, gym, guitar, chopper, iron, daughter, hymn, language, individual, giraffe, brick, pencil, laser, law, lettuce, wood, magic, raccoon, machine, sea, lie, monosemia, motorcycle, math, lie, honey, nation, neutron, girlfriend, country, bird, bread, pantheon, umbrella, clown, beach, polysemy, kingdom, rural, watermelon, roof, phone, tv, temperature, thermometer, truth, zoo