Glossary
connotation
Connotation is the feeling a word carries beyond its dictionary meaning — why thrifty and stingy can describe the same habit and land differently.
Connotation is the feeling a word carries beyond its plain meaning. Thrifty and stingy name the same habit and are not interchangeable: one praises the care and the other resents it, so a passage that chooses between them has already made a judgment. That is why connotation is the quietest way a writer argues — the claim arrives inside the noun, before any reason is offered. The method is to swap the word for its neutral twin and ask what changed. Stubborn becomes firm, overdue becomes late, wasteful becomes costly, and if the sentence loses an attitude it never stated, the connotation was carrying it. On a craft-and-structure item the question usually names the effect rather than the mechanism — which word shows a side, or which sentence shows the writer's attitude — and the answer is the word carrying the feeling, not the fact standing beside it. A connotation can also be turned around: a warm word used as a joke is not praise.
Taught in
Related terms
- denotation — Denotation is a word's plain, dictionary meaning — the sense the sentence is using when a word means nothing more than it says.
- loaded language — Loaded language is a word chosen for the judgment it carries — the writer's conclusion arriving inside the noun, before any reason is given.
- tone — Tone is the writer's attitude toward the subject, carried by the words chosen — not by the subject itself, and not by how the passage makes you feel.
Source: The reading skills ATI names in its own Content Outline (R.2.1-R.2.4, under the Craft and structure sub-content area), plus the tone and passage-structure skills that sub-content area's published description names; each definition below is written for the Craft and Structure guide in this exam, in our own words, and explains the skill the way the guide teaches it. (ATI Content Outline read 2026-10-09; definitions written 2026-10-09)