Polysemia – An abnormal awareness of possible ambiguity; the uncontrollable tendency to bring to mind an inappropriate or unintended sense of a word in any context.
So polysemic words can have more than one meaning. But they can also simply have a connotation that is brought to mind when one hears the word. Words with a negative connotation are said to have “semantic taint.”
You know if you have ever been a teacher in junior high or high school that you cannot tell your students to turn to page 69. You can’t use the word balls even if you are talking about sports. There are lots of words and names like that.
gay – Now has actual two different meanings: 1) happy and joyful, 2) homosexual
queer – 1) Odd, 2) Slang for homosexual
homo as a prefix – see above
diaphragm – 1) part of the body used to breathe and sing, 2) birth control device
fairy – 1) little character with wings in fairy tales, 2) slang for homosexual man
period – 1) punctuation mark, 2) menstruation
prick – 1) to stab as with a needle, 2) slang for male body part
screw – 1) little tool for putting things together, 2) slang for sex
There are people’s names who either mean something (generally in slang) and some that simply have a negative connotation:
Jack – May bring to mind the slang jack off.
John – Also name for a bathroom or for a prostitute’s customer.
Jezebel – Brings to mind a loose woman, although doesn’t actually mean it
Adolph – Perfectly fine name, but may bring up negatives, as one might first think of Hitler owning that name
Dick – Also slang for male body part
Peter – Ditto
Mr. Pecker, from the National Inquirer – Ditto!
Prudence – Might bring to mind the thought that the owner of this name is a prude.
There is another category of words that have perfectly fine meanings, but sound “dirty” even though they are not. If you are talking to children, you might get titters (there’s one right there) when you say these words:
hoary (not whore-y)
penal
asinine
feckless
titillate
Uranus
tit for tat
seaman (person in the Navy)
Some of this information comes from a book, Verbatim, which I recommend to word lovers. The book was taken from a journal, Verbatim, The Language Quarterly. Founded in 1974, the journal was supposed to have 4 pages per issue. It soon grew to 6 pages and then to as many as 64 pages per issue. The first 24 issues take up 991 pages of text.
Verbatim was founded by Laurence Urdang, one of the most prolific lexicographers of the English language. He was also a dictionary editor. The final editor of the now defunct journal was Erin McKean, an American lexicographer and the founder of Wordnik.com, the world’s largest online dictionary. She is also the editor of the book Verbatim.
Lexicographer: A person who compiles dictionaries.
The ‘homo’ prefix is quite interesting as, in fact, we use two:
The first (pronounced ‘HOME-O) which comes from the Latin and means MAN or MANKIND (as in HOME SAPIENS)
The second (pronounced HOMMO_ comes from Greek and means ‘the same as’ (as in HOMOSEXUAL)
This rather makes a nonsense of such terms as ‘homophobia’ because if pronounced HOME-O-PHOBIA it means ‘an irrational fear of mankind.’ And if it’s pronounced HOMMOPHOBIA it means ‘an irrational fear of the same’ … so a heterosexual exhibiting homophobia actual has an irrational fear of HETEROSEXUALS not homosexuals.
Such are the illogicalities introduced when language develops.
Yes, and I taught these prefixes to 7th graders, who were remarkably cool about it — but we pronounced the two meanings the same way with the long o.
I could write a dozen articles on this … being particularly polysemic myself. I spot these weird meanings everywhere. I actually have a hobby collecting newspaper headlines with double (and generally humorous) meanings. My favourites include:
HOME SECRETARY TO ACT ON CHILD PORN VIDEOS
JANE FONDA TO TEENS: USE HEAD TO AVOID PREGNANCY
Also, double entendre was the key to British humour for over two centuries, starting with the Music Halls of the 18th and 19th Centuries and finishing with a series of films (The ‘Carry On’ films) of the 1960s and 70s.
And a staple of the English Seaside was the ‘smutty postcard’ … a cartoon by artists such as Donald Gill (Google it) with suggestive dialogue. [For instance, one of a near naked man being chased by a nurse carrying a pan of boiling water while the doctor shouts, “No, Nurse, I told you to prick his boil!”]
In this PC world, I’m sure 90% of them would now be banned.
Funny! I love those. Thank you for the comment!