Denotation: dictionary meaning or meanings of a word
Connotation: an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal or primary meaning.
The connotations refer to the implications of a word.
E.g. The word «home» indicates a place where one lives, but by connotation it suggests security, love, comfort, and family – there’s no place like home!
E.g. The words «childlike» and «childish» both mean «characteristic of a child», but childlike suggests innocence whereas childish implies immaturity.
The practical writer will usually attempt to confine words to one denotation at a time; the poet, however, will take advantage of the fact that the word has more than one meaning by using it to mean more than one thing at the same time.
What denotation has the word fast in the following contexts?
Fast runner Fast colour Fast living Fast day
What are the varying connotations of these four denotations of fast?
Connotation is one of the means by which the poet can concentrate or enrich meaning.
Explain how in the following examples the denotation of the word white remains the same, but the connotations differ:
a) The young princess had blue eyes, golden hair, and a breast as white as snow.
b) Confronted with the evidence, the false princess turned as white as a sheet.
Arrange the words in each of the following groups from most positive to negative in connotation:
a) skinny, thin, gaunt, slender
b) prosperous, loaded, moneyed, affluent c) brainy, intelligent, eggheaded, smart
There is no Frigate like a Book by Emily Dickinson There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul.
What is lost if the word miles is substituted for «lands» or cheap for
«frugal»?
Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
• How old is the speaker? How old is his beloved? What is the nature of this relationship?
• How is the contradiction in line 2 to be resolved? In lines 5-6? Who is lying to whom?
• How do «simply» and «simple» differ in meaning? The words
«vainly», «habit», «told», and «lie» all have double denotations. What are they?
• What are the connotations of the words «swears» and «flattered»?
The world is too much with us by William Wordsworth The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
The first to which we nigh approched was An high headland thrust far into the sea,
Like to an horne, whereof the name it has, Yet seemed to be a goodly pleasant lea:
There did a loftie mount at first us greet,
(from Edmund Spenser’s «Colin Clouts Come Home Again»)
Philosophers in vain so long have sought,
In vain, though by their powerful Art they binde Volatil Hermes and call up unbound
In various shapes old Proteus from the Sea,
(from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 3)
