That’s pretty much the question, there in the title bar. I debated whether to put this in GQ or IMHO, but technically there is a factual answer to the question so here it be.
Not authoratative at all, but I seem to remember this as a triva question, the answer being “set”. Darn long entry at
Couple more for “it”
There was a thread on this very topic in July 2003.
As you can see the winners seemed to be “set” “run” and “jack”. (I have NO idea why Guiness, at one time considered “jack” to have many meanings and definitions but you can see what they say in that thread).
Run has only 10 entries in Dictionary.com, but 46 in M-W (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=run&x=12&y=17.) has only 35. It http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=it&x=19&y=16 has only four.
obviously this is something that varies quite a bit according to the specific dictionary and editor… which kind of makes sense. The more common terms that have fairly few definitions would probably change less, while one editor might take a look and go “46 definitions for run?? Heck, we can cut that down to 20 or better!!”
I also recall “bay” being in the running for most definitions. Alas, I don’t have a big unabridged dictionary so I can’t check.
Depends on the dictionary. In the OED, it’s set; in Webster’s Third, it’s take; in Random House Unabridged 2nd Edition, it’s run. And the word with the most parts of speech is like which can be any of about 7 different parts of speech (exact number depending on the dictionary).
[potential hijack] Be careful when selecting verbs like ‘set’ and ‘run’ - if you look at the definitions you’ll see that a lot of them refer to combinations with other words eg run over, run out, run through, run in, run into etc. These are known as ‘phrasal’ or ‘Multi-word verbs’ and I’m not sure that, strictly speaking, they fit in with the OP. [/potential hijack]
I’ll look at the links (they’re in back tabs) – but I’m suprised not to see “get” as a contender.
“go” has 25 entries at dictionary.com.