connotation •\ˌkä-nə-ˈtā-shən\• noun 1. an idea that is implied or suggested 2. what you must know in order to determine the reference of an expression The word connotation has appeared in 161 New York Times articles in the past year, including on May 10 in "Skateboarding Past a Midlife Crisis" by Alex Williams: "When you step on a board, all of your muscles are firing at the same time to do one thing," said Chadd Hall, a 39-year-old information technology manager in Atlanta who slips out of work at lunch to ride his 39-inch Rayne skateboard. You don't have a whole lot of time to think about all the things that make up a 40-year-old's life: how the kids are doing in school, all the different people at work coming at you needing something. All of that fades away. The anti-authority mystique is not lost on Joe Borress, 41, a contractor from Greenwich, Conn., who took up skateboarding two years ago, and now commutes from Grand Central Terminal to his office in SoHo on a 38-inch Bustin Maestro. "Skateboarding has that association: youth, punk, rebel," he said. It has that connotation of being bad. Learn more about the word "connotation" and see usage examples across a range of subjects on the Vocabulary dictionary.