[PRL] Denotation: barbarous neologism required

[Paul Steckler]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 10:21 AM, John Clements
<clements at brinckerhoff.org> wrote:
> Bizarrely, it appears that most people in the languages community use the
> latter.  That is: suppose that "(lambda (x) x)" denotes the platonic
> identity function.  I believe we say that the program is the denotation of
> the function, rather than that the function is the denotation of the
> program.

You might gain some intuition by using "means" instead of "denotes", and
"meaning" instead of "denotation".

If A denotes/means B, then B is the denotation/meaning of A.

-- Paul