Polysemic

occurs in: Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle, p. 18

The term polysemy comes from Ancient Greek: polys meaning “many” and sema meaning “sign”. An expression, for example a word, a phrase or a symbol, of polysemic character has several distinct but related meanings, and is therefore ambiguous.

In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Raymond Williams states that “[…] questions are not only about meaning; in most cases, inevitably, they are about meanings.” He goes on to explain that when writing a dictionary entry, the meaning of a word is usually strongly tied to a specific place and time. However, with words, especially those that describe ideas or values, we usually encounter a complexity of meanings that includes changes over time. In this sense, most words are polysemic and difficulties arise when one tries to squeeze them into a single definition.

Ironically, the first thing I did for this glossary entry was to write a definition. When I first read the word polysemic, I did not know the meaning and had to look up a definition myself to make sense of it. Looking back now—I could have translated it had I given it little more thought.