(1) After discussing concrete and abstract names, we now have to speak about another division among the names scholastics often use. Thus, you have to know that certain names are merely absolute [and] others are connotative. Merely absolute names are those that do not signify something principally and [something] else, or even the same [thing], secondarily. Rather, whatever is signified by the name is signified equally primarily [by it]. For example, it is clear with the name ‘animal’ that it does not signify [anything] but cattle, asses and men, and so on for other animals. It does not signify one [animal] primarily and another one secondarily in such a way that something has to be signified in the nominative and [something] else in an oblique [case]. Neither in the definition expressing what the name means1 do there have to occur such distinct [terms] in different cases, or an adjectival verb.2
(2) In fact, properly speaking, such3 names do not have a definition expressing what the name means. For, properly speaking, for a name that has a definition expressing what the name means, there is [only] one definition explicating what the name means — that is, in such a way that for such a name there are not several expressions expressing what the name means [and] having distinct parts, one of which signifies something that is not conveyed in the same way by some part of the other expression. Instead, such names,4 insofar as what they mean is concerned, can be explicated after a fashion by several expressions that do not signify the same things by their5 parts. And so none of those [expressions] is properly a definition expressing what the name means.
(3) For example, ‘angel’ is a merely absolute name (at least if it is not the name of a job, but of the substance6 only). For this name there is not some one definition expressing what the name means. For one [person] explains what this name means by saying “I understand by an angel a substance abstracted from matter”, another [person] by “An angel is an intellectual and incorruptible substance”, and [yet] another [person] by “An angel is a simple substance that does not enter into composition with [anything] else”.7 The one [person] explains what the name means just as well as the other [person] does. Nevertheless, some term occurring in the one expression signifies something that is not signified in the same way by [any] term of the other expression. Therefore, none of them is properly a definition expressing what the name means.
(4) And so it is for merely absolute names that, strictly speaking, none of them has a definition expressing what the name means. Such names are like the following: ‘man’, ‘animal’, ‘goat’, ‘stone’, ‘tree’, ‘fire’, ‘earth’, ‘water’, ‘heaven’, ‘whiteness’, ‘blackness’, ‘heat’, ‘sweetness’, ‘smell’, ‘taste’, and the like.
(5) But a connotative name is one that signifies something primarily and something secondarily. Such a name does properly have a definition expressing what the name means. And often you have to put one [term] of that definition in the nominative and another [term] in an oblique case. This happens for the name ‘white’. For ‘white’ has a definition expressing what the name means, in which one word is put in the nominative and another one in an oblique case. Thus, if you ask what the name ‘white’ signifies, you will say that [it signifies] the same as [does] the whole expression ‘something informed by8 a whiteness’ or ‘something having a whiteness’. It is clear that one part of this expression is put in the nominative and another [part] in an oblique case.
(6) Sometimes too a verb can occur in the definition expressing what a name means. For instance, if you ask what the name ‘cause’ signifies, it can be said that [it signifies] the same as [does] the expression ‘something from the being of which [something] else follows’ or ‘something able to produce [something] else’, or something like that.