Terms: Meaning of Terms — Connotation and denotation of terms — positive and negative

Say the word ‘lawyer’ to ten people and each pictures something slightly different — a courtroom advocate, a contract drafter, a family friend who gives free advice. Yet all ten agree on who counts as a lawyer and who does not. That gap between what a word means and who it applies to is the whole of this topic, and it is the most exam-tested single idea in this module.

In two minutes

A term is any word or phrase that can stand as the subject or predicate of a proposition; every term has a connotation (the attributes it implies) and a denotation (the class of things it applies to), and terms are further sorted as singular or general, positive or negative, and as contrary or contradictory of one another.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Logic – I on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.