Cite as: 505 U. S. 469 (1992)
Blackmun, J., dissenting
for which kind of accident, the compensation schedules included in the Act, and, in the case of a disability claim, the opinion of the claimant's doctor that the claimant, in fact, is disabled. The very nature of the situation, however, is that it is not clear that such a person is indeed "entitled to compensation"—that question, after all, is exactly the issue that the employer's position requires to be determined in administrative and perhaps subsequent judicial proceedings. The O'Leary limitation of the term "person entitled to compensation" to the situation in which the claimant's employer has acknowledged liability and commenced payments seems to me fully consistent with the requirements of ordinary language.
It is true, as the Court observes, that under the O'Leary interpretation, the term "person entitled to compensation" would take on different meanings in different contexts. See ante, at 478. This Court, however, has not inflexibly required the same term to be interpreted in the same way for all purposes. Compare Barnhill v. Johnson, 503 U. S. 393, 401-402, and n. 9 (1992), with id., at 406 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (noting that the maxim is "not inexorable," but arguing that because "nothing in the [statute's] structure or purpose" counsels otherwise, the Court should have applied it). This Court has recognized:
"Most words have different shades of meaning and consequently may be variously construed, not only when they occur in different statutes, but when used more than once in the same statute or even in the same section. . . .
"It is not unusual for the same word to be used with different meanings in the same act, and there is no rule of statutory construction which precludes the courts from giving to the word the meaning which the legislature intended it should have in each instance." Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers, Inc. v. United States, 286 U. S. 427, 433 (1932).
501
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