CAT4 Practice Exam 2025 – Complete Exam Prep Guide

The term used to express a word with multiple meanings is "lexical ambiguity." This concept arises when a single word can represent two or more meanings depending on the context in which it is used. For instance, the word "bank" can refer to a financial institution or the side of a river. Lexical ambiguity highlights the complexity of language and the importance of context in understanding meaning.

While "polysemy" also refers to a situation where a single word has multiple meanings, it is a more specific term that focuses on a single word having several related meanings, such as "head" in "head of a company" and "head of a pin." This distinction between general lexical ambiguity and the more specific nature of polysemy underlines why "lexical ambiguity" is the broader, encompassing term.

The other choices, such as "semantic variation" and "contextual diversity," address related concepts involving meaning and context but do not specifically define the condition of a word having multiple meanings. Therefore, the selected term effectively captures the essence of the phenomenon.