# Words with two meanings **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 14, 2026, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684 "2026-01-14T13:45:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/21 "2026-01-14T21:30:32Z")
People here are having words about words. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/22 "2026-01-14T22:07:56Z")
“Mole” is a good one, because it has multiple meanings with completely different etymologies. I think that a skin blemish and an Avogadro’s number quantity both derive from a word meaning “mass”, but the burrowing mammal and the Mexican sauce are both unrelated to those and to each other. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/23 "2026-01-14T22:22:16Z")
And both are unrelated to a catholic service. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/24 "2026-01-14T22:25:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Mole” is a good one, because it has multiple meanings with completely different etymologies …and a unit of measurement in Chemistry ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/25 "2026-01-14T22:40:20Z")
Yup, that’s the “Avogadro’s number quantity”. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/26 "2026-01-14T23:15:10Z")
Fire means both flame, and to shoot a missile weapon. An interesting aspect of this is that characters in fantasy stories that talk about “firing arrows” are speaking anachronistically, since the use of “fire” to mean shooting at things is derived from _fire_arms. They’d have used “loose” or shoot" in real history. Phase is interesting in that while it means “stage in a process”, “different forms of matter” and “a type of electrical waveform”, it’s also in the last few decades acquired the meaning of “go through solid objects like a ghost”. No one seems sure where it started, early examples range from Kitty Pryde of the X-Men “phasing” though walls, to Dungeons and Dragons’ Phase Door spell. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/27 "2026-01-14T23:25:42Z")
My first grade teacher used to always threaten to make us copy the dictionary entry for “run” as punishment, because that word has so many definitions. You can run in a race. Or you can run a business. Or run for office. Or my fridge runs. Paint runs. And I’m sure I’ve left out a bunch, but I have run out of motivation to list them. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/28 "2026-01-14T23:33:44Z")
Xerox and xerox, Google and google are examples of proper names that have evolved a second meaning as generic verbs. “I used Google to google ‘google’.” ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2026, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/29 "2026-01-14T23:39:57Z")
Cleave – to split, or to cling tightly to ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/30 "2026-01-15T02:43:31Z")
You got there right before me. But it is really two separate words with distinct etymologies, histories and conjugations. Cleave, cleft, and either cleft (palate) or cloven (hoof) is to take apart, while cleave, cleaved, cleaved is to bring together. Somewhere on an old dead computer, I have a list of over 100 pairs of words with the same spelling but different pronunciation and meaning. One of the most interesting is unionized. You can’t even say what indefinite article it takes. A unionized factory vs. an unionized solution. ---
**Author:** ![Patx2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/73ab20/32.png) [@Patx2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patx2)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/31 "2026-01-15T02:51:23Z")
I didn’t see this one, compress. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/32 "2026-01-15T03:33:36Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > “Mole” is a good one, because it has multiple meanings with completely different etymologies. I think that a skin blemish and an Avogadro’s number quantity both derive from a word meaning “mass”, but the burrowing mammal and the Mexican sauce are both unrelated to those and to each other. Which leads to the question: What would happen if you had a mole of moles, as in 6.022\*10^23 small burrowing mammals? Thankfully, XKCD’s What If has the answer. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/lLlwvmu1ZeA/maxresdefault.jpg "What if you had a mole of moles?") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLlwvmu1ZeA) ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2026, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684/33 "2026-01-15T12:42:29Z")
What would we do without XKCD? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-with-two-meanings/1026684.md?page=1)