Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Meaning or significance, especially of a word.
  • noun The action or process of signifying.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of signifying or making known; expression or indication of meaning in any manner.
  • noun A fact as signified; an established or intended meaning; the import of anything by which thought is or may be communicated; connotation, or logical comprehension; implication; sense: as, the signification of a word or a gesture; the significations of mathematical and other conventional signs.
  • noun Significance; occult meaning; a fact as inferable from a phenomenon of which it is said to be the signification.
  • noun In French-Canadian law, the act of giving notice; notification.
  • noun Synonyms Meaning, etc. See significance.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of signifying; a making known by signs or other means.
  • noun That which is signified or made known; that meaning which a sign, character, or token is intended to convey.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of signifying, or something that is signified; significance.
  • noun Evidence for the existence of something.
  • noun A meaning of a word.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the message that is intended or expressed or signified

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin significatio.

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Examples

  • - The patrons of the Egyptian origin of the sacred name appeal to the common Egyptian formula, Nuk pu nuk but though its literal signification is “I am I”, its real meaning is “It is I who” …

    jhvh is the enemy of god and man 2009

  • As words convert to waves, their very signification is what gets left behind.

    Captivation and Liberty in Wordsworth's Poems on Music 2008

  • The differential system that rules out voice from the byplay of linguistic signification is therefore an oscillatory mechanism through which voice itself may seem to stage its phantom evanescent renewal.

    Phonemanography: Romantic to Victorian 2008

  • This double signification is possible because of Las Casas's contested status in Britain as an icon for abolitionists.

    London-Kingston-Caracas: The Transatlantic 2006

  • More often, though, we participate in signification less self-consciously, more by elective affiliation, with much less formal expectations and obligations; in so doing, we float along with the significations made available by mass culture and socially-dominant institutions.

    AKMA’s Random Thoughts 2005

  • For Blake the unit of signification can be anything along a sliding analogical scale of the particulars of textual production: from the whole of a published, finished copy down to the smallest drops of ink and finest of etched marks, Blake's vision of signification is like a great chain of reading with every link forged as it is perceived by the reader.

    Unlocking Language: Self-Similarity in Blake's _Jerusalem_. 2001

  • The minute end of the scale of signification is limited only by the limits of his perception, the minutest of graphic particulars that his graver could carve or his pen could write.

    Unlocking Language: Self-Similarity in Blake's _Jerusalem_. 2001

  • Beza himself confesseth, that beyond Jordan, is the proper signification of the Greek word beyond, Matthew 4: 15.

    From the Talmud and Hebraica 1602-1675 1979

  • Pillar, Plain Of The or rather "oak of the pillar" (that being the real signification of the Hebrew word elon), a tree which stood near Shechem and at which the men of Shechem and the house of Millo assembled to crown Abimelech the son of Gideon.

    Smith's Bible Dictionary 1884

  • James Francis Edward, who called himself James the Third, and whom his opponents called the Pretender, by a translation which gave an injurious signification to the French word "pretendant."

    A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) Justin McCarthy 1871

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