Figurative Language and Connotation

1. Show the pairs: slender/skinny, curious/nosy, thrifty/stingy, confident/bossy. Explain that each pair means roughly the same thing in the dictionary.
2. Ask: which word in each pair would you rather someone used about you? Students vote with hands.
3. Ask why. Fish for: "slender" sounds like a compliment, "skinny" like a criticism; "nosy" suggests poking into things that are not your business. Name it: the dictionary meaning is the denotation; the feeling the word carries is the connotation.

“The dictionary says these words mean the same. Your vote says they do not. The difference you voted on is called connotation.”

1. Display: "The old house crouched at the end of the lane, its two upstairs windows staring down at the gate. Inside, the hallway was a long throat of shadow. Grandpa's armchair still waited by the cold fireplace, and the clock on the wall ticked like someone tapping a finger, impatient for us to leave."
2. Underline "crouched." Literal meaning: sitting low with legs bent. Ask: what does it suggest about the house? Fish for: an animal, ready to spring, something watching and threatening.
3. Substitute the neutral card: "The old house stood at the end of the lane." Read both aloud. Ask: what did we lose? Answer: the sense of danger and of the house being alive. Write: "Loss = connotation."
4. Repeat with "staring" (swap for "facing"): we lose the feeling of being watched. Repeat with "waited" (swap for "was"): we lose the sense that the chair expects Grandpa back, which makes it sad rather than scary.
5. Metaphor: "the hallway was a long throat of shadow." Ask: what two things are compared? A hallway and a throat. What qualities carry across? Long, narrow, dark, and leading inside something that might swallow you. Swap for "the hallway was dark" and name what is lost.
6. Simile: "ticked like someone tapping a finger, impatient for us to leave." Ask: what does the clock's sound suggest about how the narrator feels? Fish for: unwelcome, hurried, as if the house wants them gone.

“Swap in the plain word and read the sentence again. Whatever you no longer feel is what the author's word was doing. Name that, and you have explained the connotation.”

1. Give pairs a second paragraph: "Mrs. Hale marched into the classroom and planted her bag on the desk. Her smile was a thin line drawn with a ruler. "Good morning," she announced, and thirty chairs scraped to attention."
2. Pairs substitute neutral words for "marched" (walked), "planted" (put), "announced" (said), and the metaphor "a thin line drawn with a ruler" (small). For each, they write the literal meaning, what the original suggests, and what was lost.
3. Expected: "marched" suggests a soldier, strict and purposeful; "planted" suggests she means to stay and take control; the ruler metaphor suggests the smile is measured, exact and not warm.
4. Then give an overloaded sentence: "The soup was a volcanic lake of molten, explosive, sun-scorched flavor." Ask pairs whether "The soup was too hot to eat" is better. Most will agree it is — vivid words piled up stop meaning anything.

1. Students complete the word-meaning page; the passage is on the sheet.
2. For every item they write two answers: what the word means and what it suggests.

1. Ask: "The clock ticked" versus "The clock ticked like someone tapping a finger." What does the simile add? Take one answer that names a feeling, not just "it is more descriptive."