5 Verbs to Use for the Word connotation
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.
Moreover circumstance as well as sentiment may control the connotation of a word.
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.
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.
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.