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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

connotation.

A meaning of a word or phrase that is suggested or implied, as opposed to a denotation, or literal meaning. A characteristic of words or phrases, or of the contexts that words and phrases are used in.

11 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˌkɒnəˈteɪʃən/Received-Pronunciation/ˌkɑnəˈteɪʃən/General-American, dialectal/ˌkɒnəˈteɪʃən/Canada, dialectal/ˌkɔnəˈtæɪʃən/Australia
  1. A meaning of a word or phrase that is suggested or implied, as opposed to a denotation, or literal meaning. A characteristic of words or phrases, or of the contexts that words and phrases are used in.

    The word "advisedly" has a connotation of "wisely", although it denotes merely "intentionally" and "deliberately."
    The word "happy" has a positive connotation, while "sad" has a negative connotation.
  2. The attribute or aggregate of attributes connoted by a term, contrasted with denotation.

    The two expressions "the morning star" and "the evening star" have different connotations but the same denotation (i.e. the planet Venus).
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Medieval Latin connotātiō, from connotō (“to mark in addition”), from Latin con- (“together, with”) + notō (“to note”); equivalent to connote + -ation.

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connotation studioconnotation workshello, connotation

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.