Focus on Vocabulary: Use Context Clues: Multiple-Meaning Words
Some words in English have multiple, or more than one, meaning. For instance, the word well has more than one meaning.
Rosa felt well enough to go to the concert. (well = not sick)
My uncle gets water from a well. (well = a deep hole in the ground)
As you read, if you come to a word you know but that doesn’t make sense in the text, the word is probably a multiple-meaning word.
How the Strategy Works
When you come to a word that has more than one meaning, use its context, or surrounding text, to figure out which meaning the writer used.
| EXAMPLE | Jan is ready to present her report. |
1. Read the entire sentence or paragraph to find other words that might be clues to the word’s meaning.
2. Decide if the word names an action, a thing, or describes something. In this example, Jan is about to do something, so present names an action.
3. Try to see how the word affects the rest of the sentence. Jan is ready to do something with her report. What might she do?
4. Restate the sentence. “Jan is ready to give her report.”
5. Decide the meaning of the word that makes sense. In this example, present means “to give or to share.”
Use the strategy to figure out the meaning of close.
Strategy in Action
“The word close here describes how scientists study, so it cannot be an action, like closing a book. It might mean ‘nearby,’ but that doesn’t make sense. I think that close here means ‘careful and exact.’”
REMEMBER You can often use context to figure out the meaning of a word that has more than one meaning.