AP Literary and Rhetorical Terms - Cabarrus County Schools

The denotation of a word is its dictionary definition. In literary criticism, a word's denotation is its primary or literal significance, whereas connotation is the range of secondary significance which a word commonly suggests. For instance, the word "sea" denotes a large body of water, but its connotative meaning includes the sense of overwhelming space, danger, instability; whereas "earth ... ................
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