Assume that with the intention of paying someone a compliment you use some attractive words. You are shocked to know that the person to whom you paid the compliment treats it as an insult. Who should be blamed? You or the other person or the language you used? Blame it on the words you used.
Why? You didn’t know the connotations of the words you used. Words in any language have denotative and connotative meanings. The dictionary meaning or the primary meaning of a word is its denotation and the suggested meaning or the secondary meaning is its connotation. Connotation can be defined as “the emotional and imaginative association surrounding a word”.
Most words in English do not have one single meaning. There are many words which have connotative meanings and if we don’t know their connotations, we may fail to convey our messages effectively or our messages may be misinterpreted.
Let’s take the example of the word gay. The original meanings of gay were full of joy, merry, bright, cheerful, etc. Now the meaning of the word has changed completely and not many use the term to convey the meanings listed above. The word has a connotation. Gay is used to refer to a homosexual man. It was only in the late 1940s that the word gay was used to refer to homosexuality. The word is used as an adjective as well as a noun.
The denotative meaning of the word, home, is a place to live. Its connotative or emotive meanings are a place of security and comfort and family. When we say to someone, “Feel at home”, we want the person to feel comfortable
being there.
The word fruit has different connotations in British and American English. In British English, fruit is used to refer to a person considered eccentric and in American English, it is used to refer to a person who is a male homosexual.
The words difficult, stingy and ‘headstrong’ have negative connotations. To avoid misinterpretation, it is good to know the denotations as well as the connotations of the words we use.
— rayanal@yahoo.co.uk