Denotations and Connotations

The basic part of a word interpretation involves its denotation, the dictionary meaning or meanings. A word may also have connotations - what it suggests beyond what it expresses: overtones and meaning.

The science writer uses language to communicate information and attempt to confine his words to one meaning at a time. The poet or literary writer will take advantage of the fact that the word has a variety of meanings by using it to mean more than one thing at a time. The word's meaning becomes enriched as a result. 

Home by denotation means a place where one lives, but by connotation it suggests security, love, comfort, and family

Childlike and childish mean "characteristics of a child" but childlike suggests meekness, innocence, and wide-eyed wonder. Childish suggests pettiness, willfulness, and temper tantrums.

Emily Dickinson uses the power of a book or poetry to carry us away; to escape from our world into a world of the imagination. She has compared literature to various means of transportation, using names that have myriad connotations.

There is No Frigate Like a Book
  by Emily Dickinson

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take 
without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the carrot
That bears the human soul.

A word may have ore than one denotation. Spring in the dictionary has 30 meanings such as: pounce, leap, a season, natural source of water, or coiled wire.

Ezra Pound defined great literature as "simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."  The word charged is roughly equivalent to filled. Yet, it brings more power to the sentence.

Play with a story using the denotations

and connotations of one or all of the following words:

rainbow

spirit

pathway

connection

window

Let your imagination fly.