In linguistics, a word sense is one of the meanings of a word.
For example a dictionary may have over 50 different meanings of the word play, each of these having a different meaning based on the context of the word usage in a sentence. For example:
We went to see the play Romeo and Juliet at the theater. The children went out to play in the park.In each sentence we associate a different meaning of the word "play" based on hints the rest of the sentence gives us.
Computers or people that read words one at a time must use a process called word sense disambiguation to find the correct meaning of a word.
Read more about Word Sense: Related Terms
Famous quotes containing the words word and/or sense:
“Anxiety weighs down the human heart, but a good word cheers it up.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 12:25.
“You know, Frank, I’m beginning to get a new perspective on this crawling little animal known as man. Why a dog or a cat or a bird is cleverer than any human. They sense me immediately. But these shrewd detectives of yours—. Take away one of man’s senses and you render him helpless.”
—Lester Cole (1904–1985)