Polysemia

The polysemia is the quality of a word which is de facto to have two even several different directions (it is qualified polysemous ).

It is the case of a very large majority of the current words of the dictionary. It even arrives that a word indicates thus at the same time a thing and its opposite. Thus it is words French:

Host , indicating according to the context that which receives or that which is received;
amateur , nominating according to the context an informed or ignorant person;
more : there is of it more (it still remains about it) or it does not have of it there more (it does not remain about it).

Evolution of the language (due itself to the fact that it is necessary well to describe is a world which evolves/moves, that is to say a world whose at least our knowledge evolves/moves) led to sometimes use a word in a new direction, generally by extension of direction . One will speak for example about a sheet about paper or foot of a tree, by analogy with a sheet of tree or the foot of an animal (see Métaphore and Catachrèse).

Polysemous example of sentence in French: “gentle breeze ice”. “Small” can be either an adjective, or a common noun; “breeze” can be either a common noun, or the third nobody of the singular of the verb to break at the present indicative; can be “to it” either an article, or a personal pronoun; “ice” can be either a common noun, or the third nobody of the singular of the verb to freeze at the present indicative, without same speech of the clean direction or the illustrated direction possible “to break the ice”. In the same way, in English, cool Keep can mean is " to preserve at the frais" , that is to say " remain calme".

Semantic chains

Used by the linguist Pierre Parisot, and established by means of routes on computer, of the semantic chains often allows, while exploiting polysemia, to pass of synonym in synonym of a word to its opposite.

Example:

Leger = inconsistent =… = left = heavy

One can pass in the same way from “life” to “death”, from “man” with “woman”, etc, generally by chains not comprising more than ten words. The easy way lies in the fact that if has is synonymous with B in a certain context, and B synonymous with C in another context, that by no means implies which has is synonymous with C in some context that it is: the relation of synonymy is not transitive .

Particular case of mathematics

The mathematicians, rather than to create new words, often like to take again existing words in their giving a particular direction in the context of their discipline, thus of words like group, ring, body, adherence, distribution, fence , etc That led sometimes to formulations which can seem curious to the layman, as “a topological Espace is discrete if and only if all its parts are open and closed” . There would exist even a theorem of a specialized branch of the analysis according to which the feet of the elephants disappear in the bushes !

Particular case in chemistry

The Chemistry so present of the polysemous sentences:

Ex: To weigh approximately exactly X grams of powder.

But in the context of the Chemistry, the sentence means:

To take approximately X grams of powder and to weigh exactly the introduced mass

See too

Dictionary of the French parasynonymes - homonymy/paronymy/synonymy/parasynonymy/polysemia
Dictionary in line of synonyms/paronyms of the Research center Interlinguas on the Significance in Context (CRISCO)

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