Connotation Exercise III.

To attain it we must study the difference between abstract and concrete terms, and let neither intrude unadvisedly upon the presence or functions of the other; do the same by literal and figurative terms and instruct ourselves in the nature and significance of connotation.

Connotation>

The connotation of a word is the subtle implication, the emotional association it carriesoften quite apart from its dictionary definition.

Moreover circumstance as well as sentiment may control the connotation of a word.

A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it is to be taken.

You may properly say, "Calhoun had logic on his side"; add, however, the words "but his face was to the past," and you spoil the sentence,for face gives a reflex connotation to side, slight perhaps and momentary, but disconcerting.

EXERCISE - Connotation 1.

What is wrong with the connotation of the following?

For the mood or general "atmosphere": Anything you deem suitable in Activity 8 in EXERCISE - Connotation.

Numbered with them, to be sure, there may be a few with senses and connotations you are ignorant of friends of yours, let us say, with a reservation.

(1) Note, notion, notable, notice, notorious, cognizant, incognito, recognize, noble, ignoble, ennoble, ignore, ignorance, ignoramus, reconnoiter, quaint, acquaintance; (2) notary, notation, connotation, cognition, prognosticate, reconnaissance, connoisseur.

But sweat is a word of connotation too vigorous (though honest withal) for us to use the term in the drawing room.

The popular use of rhetoric as synonymous with "fine honeyed speech," is seen in a passage from Old Fortunatus, where it carries the modern connotation of a meretricious substitute for genuine feeling, as where Agripyne says, "Methinks a soldier is the most faithful lover of all men else; for his affection stands not upon compliment.

"Antiquity and modernity are terms that have no fixed connotation.

When the connotation of the term "sweating" had become extended so as to include along with excessive hours of labour, low wages, unsanitary conditions of work, and other evils, which commonly belong to the method of sub-contract employment, it was only natural that the same word should come to be applied to the same evils when they were found outside the sub-contract system.

Vergil's study of evolution had for him also united man and nature, making the romance of the Georgics possible; it had shaped a kind of scientific animism that permitted him to accept the language of the simple peasant even though its connotations were for him more complex and subtle.

Matulus is often used with a connotation of having magical power.

The Sanskrit dwípa has exactly the same connotation as our islands of the Blest, and like them it is placed in the setting sun.

'We bookish people have our connotations for the life we do not live.

"Good faith" has a score of connotations, and we believe apparently that good politics can dispense with all of them and that "Patriotism" has naught to do with any.

There was a differing connotation in the hands, to be sure.

It carried, as Byrne gazed, a connotation of swifter, fiercer thinking, than if the gaunt old man had stalked the floor and poured forth a tirade of words.

The title Pictures of Travel, to which Heine gave so definite a connotation, is not in itself a true index to the multifarious contents of the series of traveler's notes, any more than the volumes taken each by itself were units.

He felt, and rightly, that a work of art, being something individual, should be created with concentrated attention upon the attainment of its perfection as an individual; this perfection attained, the artist would attain to typical, symbolical connotation into the bargain.