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Updated: May 27, 2025
If we select from several languages words which are identical in denotation, we are likely to find that, because of their difference in sound, they connote different phases of the idea which they contain. For example, the English word "death" has a spiritual sound; whereas the German "der Tod" sounds horrible and grim, and the French "la mort" sounds fearsome and bizarre.
Though the only accurate definition is one declaring all the facts involved in the name, i.e. its connotation, men are usually satisfied with anything which will serve as an index to its denotation, so as to guard them from applying it inconsistently.
Then we are to suppose that "Scott is the author of Waverley" means "Scott is the denotation of M." But here we are explaining our proposition by another of the same form, and thus we have made no progress towards a real explanation. "The denotation of M," like "the author of Waverley," has both meaning and denotation, on the theory we are examining.
There are many cases in which there is no doubt as to the denotation of the word, the cases which it is intended to name, but in which the two sides to a controversy use the word with a totally different effect on their own and other people's feelings.
First, it conveys to his intellect a definite meaning through the content of the words that are employed; and secondly, it conveys to his sensibilities an indefinite suggestion through their sound. Consciously, he receives a meaning from the denotation of the words; subconsciously, he receives a suggestion from their connotation.
Miss Jones argues that "Scott is the author of Waverley" asserts identity of denotation between Scott and the author of Waverley. But there is some difficulty in choosing among alternative meanings of this contention. In the first place, it should be observed that the author of Waverley is not a mere name, like Scott.
Hence, too, disputes in science have often assumed the form of a battle of definitions; such definitions being not arbitrary, but made with a view to some tacitly assumed principle needing expression. We ought, if possible, to define in consonance with the denotation.
And yet even in the absurd, a sympathetic observer may detect a purpose which is honest and right. Miss Stein has indubitably written nonsense, but she began with sense. For words have their sound-values as well as their sense-values, and prose rhythms do convey to the mind emotions that mere denotation cannot give.
In fact, it would be nearer to the truth to say that the meaning of "Scott" is the denotation of "the author of Waverley." The relation of "Scott" to Scott is that "Scott" means Scott, just as the relation of "author" to the concept which is so called is that "author" means this concept.
For poetry words should be freighted, with associations of feeling, that they may awaken sympathy. It is the suggestive power of words that the poet cares for, rather than their current denotation. How laughable are the attempts of the commentators to interpret a line in Virgil as they would a sentence in Aristotle's Physics!
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