Polysemy

Polysemy refers to a single word with multiple, conceptually related meanings, like run (move quickly/period of competition in theater or sport). In contrast to homonymy (accidental similarity between words), polysemy has shared connected meanings from a shared origin, like mouth (of a river/of an animal). An extreme example of polysemy is the word sound with 19 noun meanings, 12 adjective meanings, 12 verb meanings, 4 meanings in verb phrases, and 2 adverb meanings. Another with an even greater number of meanings is the word set.