He swept the floor every morning, and was a ray of sunshine in the office.
He also emptied the waste baskets and cleaned the cuspidors.
<3. Connotation>
The connotation of a word is the subtle implication, the emotional
association it carries--often quite apart from its dictionary definition.
Thus the words _house_ and _home_ in large measure overlap in
meaning, but emotionally they are not equivalents at all. You can say
_house_ without experiencing any sensation whatever, but if you utter
the word _home_ it will call back, however slightly, tender and
cherished recollections. _Bald heads_ and _gray hair_ are both
indicative of age; but you would pronounce the former in disparaging
allusion to elderly persons, and the latter with sentiments of veneration.
You would say, of a clodpole that he plays the _fiddle_, but of Fritz
Kreisler that he plays the _violin_. And just as you unconsciously
adapt words to feelings in these obvious instances, you must learn, on
peril of striking false notes verbally, to do so when distinctions are
less gross.
Moreover circumstance as well as sentiment may control the connotation of
a word. A word or phrase may have a double or triple connotation, and
depend upon vocal inflection, upon gesture, upon the words with which it
is linked, upon the experience of speaker or hearer, upon time, place, and
external fact, or upon other forces outside it for the sense in which it
is to be taken.
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