Professional academic linguist here. (Yes, that’s a thing.)

Words have the meanings that communities apply to them. There is no governing body over word meanings. There can be a tension (e.g. two groups using the same term in different ways), but that doesn’t really mean that the word means both. Words mean different things to different groups. It has to be this way, for epistemic and pragmatic reasons.

In that sense, meanings are not consciously assigned. So the answer to your original question could be “no”.

But in another sense, all meanings are possible for any given meaningful sequence around the world. Which means, in principle, given infinite communities of practice, a word could have infinite meanings. A stretch, of course.

Edit:

There is no governing body over word meanings

I’m speaking here in terms of global English. There are some languages that have governing bodies, or at least bodies that claim to be governing bodies, like French with the Académie Française. But this is not at all the norm.

“Dude”

ACK! ACK ACK ACK ACK. ACK ACK.

Ook.

I am groot.

You sure as squantch can!

There’s a sci-fi movie from USSR, “Kin-dza-dza”. The natives of another planet in another galaxy were telepathes, but used language consisting of only a few words. “Koo” was for almost any word, “kiu” for swearing, “ketse” for matches (most valuable asset) and a few more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza!

Smurf yeah we can.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

Marklar

Aladeen

sounds skibidi

The the the the the, the the the the the the the the; the the the the the the.

Not really. A word with every meaning is meaningless itself, since it doesn’t allow you to narrow down the word’s intended meaning from the set of all possible meanings.

Gary, Gary… Gary?