Connotation of Words When you annotate for your readers the dictionary meaning of an unfamilar word you've explained its denotative meaning. But words also have connotative meanings, and these too require annotation. The connotative meaning--also referred to as connotation--of a word refers to meanings of a word not given by a dictionary definition but often present in people's usage of it. Here's an example of the difference between annotation for a word's denotative and connotative meaning. In "The Green Crab" the word "green" refers in its denotative meaning to the color green, defined in the dictionary as like the color of emerald or as visible light of a certain wavelength. Connotatively, however, "green" is often associated with springtime, life (because growing things are green) and beginnings (because growing things are especially green when they first begin to grow, as in the spring). You can't find these meanings in the dictionary, but you probably have an experience of them if you reflect on what you associate with the color green. And we can tell that the poet who wrote the "The Green Crab" wants us to think of these association, since his poem is so much about the end of life--about what happens to "green" life. The annotation of "The Green Crab" offers further examples of analysis of the connotative meaning of words.
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