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I am writing an essay where I argue, in part, about the different meanings a concept can take depending on the context and/or the person it is being applied by. (In my case, it's the concept of 'goodness'/virtue).

I stumbled upon the following word which seemed to define the idea quite succinctly.

Dicitonary.com defines the word Polysemy as:

a condition in which a single word, phrase, or concept has more than one meaning or connotation.

However, it seems that polysemic is not an actual word. Would it be correct to use it in this context, regardless of that fact. Or is there a better alternative?

The sentence:

Bertolt Brecht introduces the polysemic nature of 'goodness' in his play...

Najm Sheikh
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    "Polysemy" refers to the semantic range of a word (or lexeme), whereas "semantic field" refers to the range of words which can be subsumed under a single **concept**. Dunno whether or not this helps, but I've just spent the last few hours doing my brain in trying to find a term or terms which can be applied to (1) the set of meanings which a word can take, as against (2) the set of words forming part of semantic group. hyponym/hypernym can apply to (2), but I'm uneasy with these terms since they seem to postulate an either/or divide rather than a set (range, filed). – Robin Hamilton Jun 17 '17 at 03:48

1 Answers1

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I think it is:

Polysemic (adjective):

  • having more than one meaning; having multiple meanings; also called polysemous

(Dictionary.com)

Both adjectives are used, see Ngram

Another less common variant is polysemantic, see Ngram

  • Huh, interesting. I based it off of Microsoft Word's spellcheck and it considered the word incorrect (but polysemy was fine). Guess, I should've checked online first. – Najm Sheikh May 24 '17 at 08:07