CONNOTATION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does connotation mean? 

• CONNOTATION (noun)
  The noun CONNOTATION has 2 senses:

1. what you must know in order to determine the reference of an expression

2. an idea that is implied or suggested

  Familiarity information: CONNOTATION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONNOTATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

What you must know in order to determine the reference of an expression

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

connotation; intension

Hypernyms ("connotation" is a kind of...):

import; meaning; significance; signification (the message that is intended or expressed or signified)

Derivation:

connotational (of or relating to a connotation)

connote (involve as a necessary condition of consequence; as in logic)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An idea that is implied or suggested

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("connotation" is a kind of...):

meaning; substance (the idea that is intended)

Derivation:

connotational (of or relating to a connotation)

connote (express or state indirectly)

 Context examples 

On the other hand, he appreciated the chance effects in words and phrases that came lightly and easily into his brain, and that later stood all tests of beauty and power and developed tremendous and incommunicable connotations.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

His thin lips, like the dies of a machine, stamped out phrases that cut and stung; or again, pursing caressingly about the inchoate sound they articulated, the thin lips shaped soft and velvety things, mellow phrases of glow and glory, of haunting beauty, reverberant of the mystery and inscrutableness of life; and yet again the thin lips were like a bugle, from which rang the crash and tumult of cosmic strife, phrases that sounded clear as silver, that were luminous as starry spaces, that epitomized the final word of science and yet said something more—the poet's word, the transcendental truth, elusive and without words which could express, and which none the less found expression in the subtle and all but ungraspable connotations of common words.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)