The words which have a single or few meanings are easily understood and learned. But how can I learn a word which has several meanings, maybe more than ten? For example, pitch, present, stick, etc.
Sometimes I have already learned one meaning of a word, but when this word comes in the context of an article, I don't know what it means there. How can I learn this kind of words? The many meanings of this kind of words confuse me.
Best Answer
Learn each meaning in context as you come across it. Learning ten meanings for one word is much the same as learning ten words with one meaning each--the only difference is that all ten words are spelled the same. There's no reason you need to memorize every sense of a word the first time you come across it.
For words with a great deal of meanings, one strategy is to break them down into groups. It's easier to remember three groups of three meanings than nine unrelated meanings, especially if the meanings in each group have something in common.
Finally, try to look at the word and see how the senses developed. Are they all conceptually related? Or perhaps most of them? If you can find a way to relate them to one another, then it'll start to make sense. In other words, you'll be understanding rather than memorizing.