AUTOHYPONYMY, VERTICAL POLYSEMY, OR Q-BASED NARROWING

AUTOHYPONYMY, VERTICAL POLYSEMY, OR Q-BASED NARROWING is a feature of the English language that still baffles me in our days.
It's when a word itself is its own hyponym, depending of context. The cases referring to living beings and their anatomy below particularly puzzled me, since, having been born and raised in Spain, I grew up solely with the term being used for the hypernym, the so-called general sense, (not as a hyponym, for which there existed another, more scientific word, in Spanish) due to Linnean taxonomy being the most prominent influence on the "street-Spanish" (as opposed to "science-Spanish", in fact, both contexts use the same words)
To disambiguate, philologists usually number the words, using 1 for the hypernym or general sense and 2 for the hyponym or specific sense (by the way, each one of the senses of the word is known as an allosemon). Which I think is rather smart, not to get mixed up with both meanings.
It's such a shame that the words can't be numbered in everyday contexts...
I will never get this feature of the English language...

EXAMPLES

SHAPES

rectangle 1 (every quadrilateral with four ninety-degree angles)
rectangle 2 (every NON-EQUILATERAL quadrilateral with four ninety-degree angles)

LIVING ORGANISMS

fingers 1 (all digits of primates)
fingers 2 (NOT all digits of primates, opposable thumbs EXCLUDED)

animals 1 (whole kingdom Animalia, or all fauna)
animals 2 (ONLY TERRESTRIAL FAUNA: mammals and reptiles)

plants 1 (whole plant kingdom, or all flora)
plants 2 (ONLY HERBACEOUS FLORA: herbs, flowers, and vegetables)

Every case when the generic name of a species overlaps with the name of gender, for instance:
cow 1 (cattle, Bos primigenius taurus, regardless of gender)
cow 2 (ONLY ADULT FEMALE cattle or Bos primigenius taurus)

OBJECTS

shoes 1 (footwear in general)
shoes 2 (LOW footwear that COVERS THE WHOLE FOOT)


COLOURS
purple 1
purple 2 (a DARK shade, not mauve, not lilac, et cetera)

etc. (the list of colour autohyponyms is endless)


VERBS

close 1
close 2 (SOFTLY, AND WITHOUT LOCKING THE DOOR)

drink 1 (swallow any liquid)
drink 2 (swallow any ETHYLIC liquid)

etc.

Yet you can't number the words constantly for an ever-confused and baffled foreigner to realize which sense of the word is being used. Which means these words above are vague. VAGUE as in vague as hell. Not calling a spade a spade, or being something speciesist.