Google Oxford dictionary word differences

Solution 1:

When you're translating from another language or you don't understand a new word, you often want the one meaning of the word that will explain and fit in with the context.

The naive understanding of words is that one word has one meaning and one meaning has one word for it (like we expect math and science to do).

But that is just not the case. One word (a sound sequence in speech or a sequence of letters in spelling) can have other meanings depending on context (the surrounding words or the real world context).

A good dictionary will give different entries with context specific examples, either made-up or actually found in literature. These different entries are for distinct meanings. The difference could be part of speech (whether a word is used as a noun or as a verb gives a change of some aspect of meaning), or it could be a metaphorical use, or it could be for etymologically different sources that somehow phonologically converged, or many other possible reasons.

In your example 'fly', the canonical meaning is of a certain small insect. But if you're reading or hearing something about baseball, it's most likely referring to a 'pop fly', a ball hit in a high arc. That is not at all the same thing as an insect. (it is most likely semantically related since both go in the air somehow).

A dictionary attempts to give these different meanings in different entries.