Connotation

connotation, distinction of meaning introduced by John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1843). A similar distinction of sense (German Sinn) and denotation (German Bedeutung) was introduced by Gottlob Frege in 1892, without reference to Mill. Mill has the credit of having discovered this important distinction of two kinds of meaning, but Mill’s treatment is in several respects less satisfactory than Frege’s. In particular, Mill applies the distinction primarily to common names and (unlike Frege) denies connotation altogether to a large class of singular names, including all simple abstract singular names such as “courage.” It was Frege who first pointed out the equivocal usage of natural language by which a name, besides its ordinary use, may have in some contexts an oblique use, denoting the same which in its ordinary use it connotes.

That the meaning of a name may not be identified with its denotation is readily made clear by means of examples. Thus “the Morning Star” and “the Evening Star” are two names of the same planet. It would be possible, however, to know the meaning of both names and even to have seen and identified the Evening Star on one occasion and the Morning Star on another, without knowing that they are the same. For it is not apparent from casual examination of the heavens that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are the same, but this was rather an early astronomical discovery established by a series of careful observations. Once this discovery is made, it is natural to introduce a third name, “Venus,” to mean the heavenly body which is the Morning Star and the Evening Star. This same planet also has other names, for example, “the second planet from the sun.” To see that this name and the name “Venus” have different meanings, it suffices to remark that if an intra-Mercurial planet were discovered, we would not then say either that Venus does not exist or that Venus is the planet which was previously called Mercury, but only that we were mistaken in supposing Venus to be the second planet from the sun. If it should be found that, by some unimaginable error, the Morning Star and the Evening Star are after all not the same, we would then indeed be obliged to say that Venus does not exist. In the light of this, the names “the Morning Star,” “the Evening Star,” “Venus,” and “the second planet from the sun” are said to have each a different connotation (or sense). If accepted astronomical facts are correct, however, the four names have the same denotation.