CONNOTATION

Connotation

A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to the word's or phrase's explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.

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connotation

Noun

  1. A meaning of a word or phrase that is suggested or implied, as opposed to a denotation, or literal meaning. A characteristic of words or phrases, or of the contexts that words and phrases are used in.
    The connotations of the phrase "you are a dog" are that you are physically unattractive or morally reprehensible, not that you are a canine.
  2. A technical term in logic used by J. S. Mill and later logicians to refer to the attribute or aggregate of attributes connoted by a term, and contrasted with denotation.
    The two expressions "the morning star" and "the evening star" have different connotations but the same denotation (i.e. the planet Venus).


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: connotation
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