Words with most meanings

Question

I am not a native speaker and it sometimes surprise me how many different meanings some words have. An example is the word call - when I was learning English I thought it was only "shout" or "to ring someone" but the list of meanings is almost endless: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/call .

What are some other such words so that I can be careful when interpreting their meaning? As if I could execute the query "give me a top ten list of words with most definition lines on TheFreeDictionary".

Answer 1

For a long time, "set" had the most meanings in the OED, but now it is "run". From the New York Times of 25th May 2011:

Which is the most lustrously complex word among the three quarters of a million or so words and senses that make up this vast mongrel tongue we know as the English language?

Well, according to the O.E.D.’s chief editor, John Simpson, we now have a winner — and a winner that may well say something about the current state of English-speaking humankind. For while in the first edition of the O.E.D., in 1928, that richest-of-all-words was “set” (75 columns of type, some 200 senses), the victor in today’s rather more frantic and uncongenial world is, without a doubt, the three-letter word “run.”

... Mr. Gilliver has finally calculated that there are for the verb-form alone of “run” no fewer than 645 meanings. A record.

In terms of sheer size, the entry for “run” is half as big again as that for “put,” a word on which Mr. Gilliver also worked some years ago. But more significantly still, “run” is also far bigger than the old chestnut “set,” a word that, says Mr. Gilliver, simply “hasn’t undergone as much development in the 20th and 21st centuries as has ‘run.’ ”

Answer 2

This is what I get using WRI curated data. Click to see a larger image.

For the record, the script used is:

r = SortBy[{Length[#[[2]]], #[[1]]}&/@({#, WordData[#]} & /@ DictionaryLookup[]), -First@# &]
BarChart[Transpose[r1][[1]], 
 ChartLabels -> 
  Placed[Text[Style[#, Italic, 24]] & /@ Transpose[r1][[2]], Center, Rotate[#, Pi/2] &]]

Edit

Just answering comments and other answers, here are the 76 meanings of break according to WRI.

1   Noun     Flight
2   Noun     Open Frame
3   Noun     Dash
4   Noun     Change Of Integrity
5   Noun     Holdup
6   Noun     Break Of Serve
7   Noun     Shot
8   Noun     Pause
9   Noun     Modification
10  Noun     Breach
11  Noun     Fortuity
12  Noun     Breakup
13  Noun     Occurrent
14  Noun     Crevice
15  Noun     Hurt
16  Noun     Interval
17  Verb     Weaken
18  Verb     Diminish
19  Verb     Injure
20  Verb     Fall
21  Verb     Domesticate
22  Verb     Change
23  Verb     Turn
24  Verb     Damage
25  Verb     Change Integrity
26  Verb     Divide
27  Verb     Check
28  Verb     Develop
29  Verb     Break Off
30  Verb     Interrupt
31  Verb     Deaden
32  Verb     Break Down
33  Verb     Change Voice
34  Verb     Go
35  Verb     Lick
36  Verb     Destroy
37  Verb     Diphthongize
38  Verb     Disrupt
39  Verb     Pause
40  Verb     Tell
41  Verb     Get Out
42  Verb     Outstrip
43  Verb     Penetrate
44  Verb     Become Punctured
45  Verb     Detach
46  Verb     Crumble
47  Verb     Bust
48  Verb     Disunite
49  Verb     Shoot
50  Verb     Modify
51  Verb     Exchange
52  Verb     Express Feelings
53  Verb     Trip The Light Fantastic Toe
54  Verb     Give Way
55  Verb     Founder
56  Verb     Appear
57  Verb     Scatter
58  Verb     Take Flight
59  Verb     Get Away
60  Verb     Change Direction
61  Verb     Impoverish
62  Verb     Designate
63  Verb     Split
64  Verb     Invalidate
65  Verb     Break Away
66  Verb     Ruin
67  Verb     Disrespect
68  Verb     Trespass
69  Verb     Come About
70  Verb     Emerge
71  Verb     Violate
72  Verb     Quit
73  Verb     Give Up Habit
74  Verb     Vary
75  Verb     Finish
76  Interjection     

Answer 3

This trivia has already been studied. The top five words in the list are:

• set (464 definitions)
• run (396 definitions)
• go (368 definitions)
• take (343 definitions)
• stand (334 definitions)

Answer 4

The most polysemous word in the OED is set.

Answer 5

I believe the answer is set. It has more than 200 definitions in the OED, organised thus:

1. To cause to sit, seat; to be seated, sit.

2. To sink, descend.

3. To put in a definite place (the manner of the action being implied either in the verb itself or in the context).

4. To place or cause to be in a position, condition, relation, or connection. (This group embraces a large number of uses in which the precise implication of sense depends mainly on the kind of construction employed.)

5. To appoint, prescribe, ordain, establish.

6. To arrange, fix, adjust.

7. To place mentally, suppose, estimate.

8. To put or come into a settled position or condition.

9. To put in the way of following a course, cause to take a certain direction.

10. Senses perhaps arising from reversal of construction or from ellipsis (their origin being often obscure).

11. With prepositions in specialized senses.

12. With adverbs in specialized senses.

This is just for the verb usage, set is also used as an adjective, noun, conjunction and comb. form.

Answer 6

Just to concur with Shoe, I remember reading long long ago - in the Guinness Book of Records of all places - that set has the most (22) distinct different meanings in English.

Another common problem among non-native users of English are phrasal verbs which can appear very similar but have quite different meanings, eg set up, set out, set off, set about, set on, set down, etc. Often native speakers will use these verbs in an attempt to simplify their language when talking to non-native speakers (eg, by using "set up" instead of "establish"), often having the opposite effect.