Definition of "polysemy" [polysemy]

• The ability of words, signs and symbols to have multiple meanings. (noun)

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• "And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the greedy habit some words have of taking more than one meaning for themselves."
• "There's indeed some ambiguity hesitate to call it "polysemy" since it seems to be a historical development around "hair cloth/shirt", which I came across only days ago reading up on Thomas More."
• "Topics range from particular language and construction-specific problems such as the "polysemy" of modal verbs in relation to context-sensitive constructions, to general technical analyses and proposals, including proposals for formalizing contextual features in constructional representations."