denotatumn.

1938 C. W. Morris in Internat. Encycl. Unified Sci. I. 83 Where what is referred to actually exists as referred to the object of reference is a denotatum. It thus becomes clear that, while every sign has a designatum, not every sign has a denotatum. A designatum is not a thing, but a kind of object or class of objects—and a class may have many members, or one member, or no members. The denotata are the members of the class.

1940 Jrnl. Relig. July 266 No appeal to revelation can deliver a man from responsibility for determining the designata and denotata of the words he uses.

1944 M. Weitz in P. A. Schilpp Philos. B. Russell 100 So to interpret the entities of physics means..that they are no longer the denotata of proper names..nor the denotata of descriptions.

1963 J. Lyons Struct. Semantics iii. 37 The vocabulary of a language is not rightly regarded as a set of isolated symbols standing in a relation of correspondence with a set of discrete and prior concepts or denotata existing in the ‘outside world’.

1968 Y. R. Chao Lang. & Symbolic Syst. 67 The word dog means the animal dog. The word is said to refer to, or denote, the thing and the thing is the referent or denotatum.

1968 Language 44 40 With adjectives, it is clear that und is obligatory when the coördinated nouns do not refer to the same sample of the denotatum.