Word of the Day:
denotation
What It Means
The act of denoting, or something (such as a symbol) that denotes
The primary, surface, literal, or explicit meaning of a signifier such as a word, phrase, or symbol; that which a word denotes, as contrasted with its connotation; the aggregate or set of objects of which a word may be predicated.
Denotation in Context
“Regarding denotation, the terms were generally used to refer to a wide range of language contact varieties and features.”
Did You Know?
From Late Latin dēnotātiō, from Latin dēnotāre (“to denote, mark out”) + -tiō (suffix forming nouns of action), from dē- (“completely”) + notāre (“to mark”); equivalent to denote + -ation.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: denotation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “denotation.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/denotation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
