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A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation. A connotation is frequently described as either positive or negative, with regard to its pleasing or displeasing emotional connection. [1]
A creature referred to as the sea-dog is also used, and resembles the Talbot with scales, webbed paws, a fin along its back, and a flat, beaver-like tail. The English heraldist Arthur Charles Fox-Davies believed the sea-dog to have originated from depictions of the beaver , citing as evidence that one of the supporters in the arms of Oxford ...
Social meaning, where words are used to establish relationships between people and to delineate social roles. For example, in Japanese, the suffix "-san" when added to a proper name denotes respect, sometimes indicating that the speaker is subordinate to the listener; while the suffix "-chan" denotes that the speaker thinks the listener is a ...
A name can have connotation but no denotation. Connotation of a name, if it has one, can be taken to be its meaning in Mill. [5] In contrast to proper names, most individual concrete names, in Mill's opinion, are not connotative. Proper names, then, have no significance. On the other hand, all general phrases are connotative in Mill's view.
A woman had a laugh when she discovered her well-behaved rescue dog is fluent in Spanish. Kalee McGee revealed she adopted Max, a 4-year-old Chihuahua, from a shelter. any time McGee gave the dog ...
French semiotician Roland Barthes used signs to explain the concept of connotation—cultural meanings attached to words—and denotation—literal or explicit meanings of words. [2] Without Saussure's breakdown of signs into signified and signifier, however, these semioticians would not have had anything to base their concepts on.
Keeping with the canine theme, the phrase "dog days of summer" is actually a reference to Sirius (the Dog Star) which is part of the constellation, Canis Major (the Greater Dog).
But connotative meanings are context-dependent, i.e. the addresser must learn how to match the meaning intended by the addresser to one of the various possible meanings held in memory. The power of connotation is that it enables the addresser to more easily consider abstract concepts and to introduce subtlety into the discourse.