Lexical ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity occurs when a single word has multiple meanings.

Two main types:

• Homonyms: Unrelated meanings (e.g., “bank” = financial institution or river edge)
• Polysemy: Related meanings (e.g., “branch” = tree limb or git branch)

Lexical ambiguity is one of several types of ambiguity in language, alongside syntactic and semantic ambiguity.

Related: On ambiguity