Concept

Denotation

Overview

In philosophy and linguistics, the denotation of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of having high temperature. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning, in particular connotation. For instance, the word "warm" may evoke calmness, coziness, or kindness (as in the warmth of someone's personality) but these associations are not part of the word's denotation. Similarly, an expression's denotation is separate from pragmatic inferences it may trigger. For instance, describing something as "warm" often implicates that it is not hot, but this is once again not part of the word's denotation.

Denotation plays a major role in several fields. Within semantics and philosophy of language, denotation is studied as an important aspect of meaning. In mathematics and computer science, assignments of denotations to expressions are a crucial step in defining interpreted formal languages. The main task of formal semantics is to reverse engineer the computational system which assigns denotations to expressions of natural languages.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Denotation is discussed.

Hence, as practical men, we become interested in the denotation more than in the description, since the denotation decides as to the truth or falsehood of so many statements in which the description occurs. Moreover, as we saw earlier in considering the relations of description and acquaintance, we often wish to reach the denotation, and are only hindered by lack of acquaintance: in such cases the description is…
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
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Even among philosophers, we may say, broadly, that only those universals which are named by adjectives or substantives have been much or often recognized, while those named by verbs and prepositions have been usually overlooked. This omission has had a very great effect upon philosophy; it is hardly too much to say that most metaphysics, since Spinoza, has been largely determined by it. The way this has occurred is…
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
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Every proposition consists of three parts: the Subject, the Predicate, and the Copula. The predicate is the name denoting that which is affirmed or denied. The subject is the name denoting the person or thing which something is affirmed or denied of. The copula is the sign denoting that there is an affirmation or denial; and thereby enabling the hearer or reader to distinguish a proposition from any other kind of…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
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Every preposition, as I have already observed, denotes some relation considered in concrete with the co-relative object. The preposition _above_, for example, denotes the relation of superiority, not in abstract, as it is expressed by the word _superiority_, but in concrete with some co-relative object. In this phrase, for example, _the tree above the cave_, the word _above_, expresses a certain relation between the…
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
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xlviii. 4). It is also called shupka, “pouring out” (Deut. xxiii. 2), on account of its function. The female organ is called kobah (Num. xxv. 8), from kebah (Deut. xviii. 3), which denotes “stomach”; reḥem, “womb,” is the inner organ in which the fœtus develops; ẓoah (Isa. xxviii. 8), “refuse,” is derived from the verb yaẓa, “he went out”; for “urine” the phrase meme raglayim, “the water of the feet” (2 Kings…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
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Denotation

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Denotation

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