Dear Wordwind
One of the problems with connotation is, of course, that often the primary connotation takes on the role of main meaning, or denotation. For instance, sinister means left-handed, or on the left, but the connotation, from left-handed people being viewed as a bit weird, has now become the denotative meaning for the word – a bit dark and possibly evil.
If you want really explosive, as it were, denotation/connotation differences, try sexually or racially loaded words. The word ‘negro’, for instance, is simply Spanish for ‘black’, but think of the connotations!
What about ‘blonde’? Of course it’s a hair colour, but worldwide (and especially in the UK), it also ‘stands for’ ditzy, dizzy, silly, even stupid: “I’m having a blonde moment”.
Or take another simple example: ‘vulture’ – a type of large bird that usually feeds by scavenging and tends to have a featherless head and neck. But connotatively – the epitome of the evil feeder on the dead, a scrounger that waits for you to die so that it can ravage your corpse. How easily it lends itself to metaphorical use with regard to humans and their behaviours: impossible without the connotations of the word.
Or think of words that, in modern scientific use are near-synonyms, like ‘brain’ and ‘mind’, but how different in their connotations: a mind suggests an aspiring object, an entity separated from the corporeal, a thing that drives itself; a brain, on the other hand, is definitely corporeal and if at all it drives the body, it seems to do so mechanically, compared to the spiritual dimension we attribute to the mind. The brain can be clever, but it is the mind that is creative.
“This is the feminine gender”. “She is very feminine”. Cherchez le difference…
Nice topic.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
