There are lots of these in the English language. Go to the park and park your car. Look at that crane crane its neck next to that crane on the construction site. My feet are three feet long.
Right; also, do not forget that we should distinguish between one word with several meanings, or aspects of meaning, and two completely different words that happen to be spelled the same.
All languages have those kind of words, but English sure seems to have a lot.
My father used to jokingly complain about the word “Fair”
“It can mean a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities, that something is just, that something is beautiful or that somebody is blond or light skinned (“fair hair”)…”
“There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure…”
I think this thread would be shorter if we listed English words that don’t have two meanings. There are thousands of words that have more than one meaning.
This confused me when I first read headlines that the US military was commandeering ‘sanctioned’ Venezuelan oil tankers. I read it as meaning ‘legally sanctioned’ and thought “why are we taking over legit oil tankers?”
Citation is similarly ambiguous. It can mean either approval (a citation for bravery) or punishment (a traffic citation).
Now with the revised guidance from the OP, here’s an esoteric one y’all might enjoy.
Back in the very early days of aviation, like after the Wright Brothers first flew, but before World War One, the term “aerodrome” was used to refer to airplanes, airports, and hangars.
So the aerodrome landed at the aerodrome and then was stored in the aerodrome.