n. The act of denoting, or something (such as a symbol) that denotesn. The primary, literal, or explicit meaning of a word, phrase, or symbol; that which a word denotes, as contrasted with its connotation; the aggregate or set of objects of which a word may be predicated.n. The intension and extension of a wordn. Something signified or referred to; a particular meaning of a symboln. The surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier, and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionaryn. Any mathematical object which describes the meanings of expressions from the languages, formalized in the theory of denotational semanticsn. A first level of analysis: what the audience can visually see on a page. Denotation often refers to something literal, and avoids being a metaphor.