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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 ]
In his A System of Logic Mill introduced a distinction between what he called "connotation" and "denotation". Connotation is a relation between a name (singular or general) and one or more attributes. For example, 'widow' denotes widows and connotes the attributes of being female, and of having been married to someone now dead. If a name is ...
Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men"). During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech.
Speechwriter and journalist Richard Heller gives the example that it is common for a politician to advocate "investment in public services," because it has a more favorable connotation than "public spending." [11] In the 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language", George Orwell discussed the use of loaded language in political discourse:
Authors writing their texts consider not only a word's denotation but also its connotation. For example, a person may be described as stubborn or tenacious, both of which have the same basic meaning but are opposite in terms of their emotional background (the first is an insult, while the second is a compliment).
An idiom is an expression that has a figurative meaning often related, but different from the literal meaning of the phrase. Example: You should keep your eye out for him. A pun is an expression intended for a humorous or rhetorical effect by exploiting different meanings of words. Example: I wondered why the ball was getting bigger. Then it ...
A male cat paying a "call" on a female cat, who then serves up kittens, insinuating that the "results" of children is predicated on a male "catcall". An innuendo is a hint, insinuation or intimation about a person or thing, especially of a denigrating or derogatory nature.
In semiotics, connotation arises when the denotative relationship between a signifier and its signified is inadequate to serve the needs of the community. A second level of meanings is termed connotative. These meanings are not objective representations of the thing, but new usages produced by the language group.