Language is the main human source of communication and it is a very complex ability that involves many different aspects, one of them is the meaning of words that we use to express ourselves. Meaning depends on many factors and the linguistic branch that studies it is semantics and pragmatics. Through studies in these areas we find the terms homonymy and polysemy to refer to different phenomena that can occur in relation to the meaning of the words we use when executing language. The Oxford English Dictionary defines homonymy as the phenomenon in which “…two or more words having the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings and origins. The field of homonymy can be divided into different subcategories: we can speak of homographs when two or more words coincide in their spelling but differ in sound or meaning; On the other hand, homophony occurs when two or more words sound the same but are spelled differently. But we can find cases in which these two characteristics coincide at the same time, this is what we call perfect homonymy, when two or more words coincide in their spelling and in their sound but differ in their meaning. We find another phenomenon which is polysemy which, according to the OED, is “the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word…”. According to Falkum in “Generativity, Relevance, and the Problem of Polysemy,” “[t]here are several different ways in which a word can have more than one meaning. Some general distinctions tell us that homonyms have different sources and different lexemes that share the same form, while polysemy words are developed from the same source and lexeme but have different meanings. Confusion arises in the distinction between perfect ...... middle of paper ...... to use these words correctly. Works Cited1. From “Semiasology”. March 4, 2014, March 13, 2014, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment#Definitions>Falkum, Ingrid Lossius. “Generativity, relevance and the problem of polysemy”. March 10, 2013. Hongyong, Liu. English lexicology, polysemy and homonymy. March 10, 2014 Iomdin, Boris. `Lexical semantics. An Introduction´ (ppt)Russian Language Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences. March 13, 2014. McGregor, William. Linguistics, an introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academy, 2013.