The word cardinal (link) has two meanings as an adjective ('of foremost importance', 'colored dark red') and five as a noun ('a Roman Catholic rank just below Pope', 'a dark red', 'a bird', 'a woman's cloak', 'a number'). The Late Latin meaning of cardinalis 'pivotal, principal' differs from the Classical Latin meaning 'of a hinge' from [i]cardo, cardinis, 'hinge'.

As I pondered cardinal, it dawned on me that there are two kinds of words in a person's lexicon: let's call 'em alpha words and omega words for want of a better name. Alpha words comprise something like 95% of the words in our vocabularies. Of these words, nearly 90% of them have more than one meaning. In fact, omega words, the kind people collect into lists but rarely use, only have a single meaning simply because people don't really use them. As soon as you start using words, the meanings tend to split and shift.

Ceci n'est pas un seing.