Polysemy
Polysemy is a term referring to items with multiple meanings, and the ambiguity these multiple meanings create. In language, this describes words that might be interpreted variably in different contexts.
There is a bug crawling on the screen.
The FBI placed a bug in the ambassador’s office.
Caution: these olives have been mechanically processed. The occasional pit may be present.
The trap consisted of branches and leaves, covering a large pit.
I love the colors of the trees in fall.
Be careful not to fall in.
The term could easily be applied as well to the nature of pivot chords in musical modulations. For instance, modulating from the key of c-minor to E-flat-major, one might find a g-minor triad serving as a pivot. The three notes g/b-flat/d are diatonic pitches in both keys. The chord is therefore ambiguous (or polysemous) since it could resolve in various ways. This musical resolution can be considered as similar to the semantic resolution or parsing that takes place in the mind of a language user.
