Connotation, Part Deux

I wrote a post some time back about the power connotation has over denotation.  We can have an association with a particular word in our minds that may have nothing to do at all with the actual definition of that word. 

For instance, one of my daughter's teachers is named Pearl.  She is kind and sweet and my daughter just loves her.  When I hear the word "pearl" now, I don't think of something that comes out of an oyster, I think of a specific person: Pearl, our teacher.  That's a new association I have with that word.  Her sister is named Precious and that word meant cute and adorable and cuddly and sickly sweet (and it still does,) but the first thing that comes to mind now when I heard the word "precious" is our friend at school.

I was talking to my husband about the boating trip he just went on.  He went to the coast and met up with the crew of the boat he would be on for the day to go out deep sea fishing.  They not only had a successful day catching fish, they also caught a record-breaking Wahoo at over eighty-eight pounds.  The fish was not only the largest for their boat, it was the largest for that harbor their boat docked in.

I heard stories of the harbor master weighing the fish and I pictured the docks at the harbor and the happy fishermen and crew as they took pictures of their record-breaking fish.  It was a nice thought.

Then, yesterday, I saw a television show about a boating accident in which people died due to a tragic mistake in 2001.  The location this happened at was right outside Pearl Harbor. 

"Pearl Harbor"--two words I have a positive association with individually, but said together bring images of war and sadness to mind.   The connotations we have for words can be dramatically different than what those words mean by definition alone.

The Big Boy Update:  "That will make you itch."  The itching from his food-based allergies must be something he doesn't want to experience if he doesn't have to.  If he's interested in a food, even if it's candy, and you tell him, "that will make you itch" he has absolutely no interest in eating it.  And he will remember too.  I offered him some Biscoff spread yesterday morning.  He looked at it and said, "um, that looks like nuts" and would have none of it, regardless of my explaining how it was nut-free, even after his sister was eating and loving it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Hammer hammer"  We tried cheeseburgers yesterday again to see if we could get the children to go in a direction other than chicken.  Generally, they prefer chicken over other meats.  My son had no real interest but my daughter was all about it, leaving the chicken nuggets uneaten on her plate.  I explained what it was she was eating and she kept calling the hamburger a, "hammer hammer."  When she woke up hours later from her nap she asked for more hamburger, so she must have liked it quite a bit.

Fitness Update:  Ten miles this morning in the dark.  Preparation for our twenty-mile run on Sunday.