Such compounds are said to be transparent from the point of view of their meaning. Yet there are compounds whose meaning does not follow from the meanings of the constituent parts (e.g. black sheep is not a sheep but a person who is re18 garded by other members of their family as a failure; the grass roots are the ordinary people in an organization, rather than the leaders)

 A distinction is drawn between denotation, which is understood as the relationship between words and the entities in the world to which they refer, and connotation, which is understood as the additional (often emotional or evaluative) associations suggested by words.

  if we only know the meaning of /dog/ we also know the meaning of /dogs/. Thus, we can decompose /dogs/ into two parts: /dog/ and /s/. The minimal parts of speech that bear meaning are called morphemes. Often, it is tacitly assumed that a morpheme is a part of a word; bigger chunks are called idioms. Idioms are /kick the bucket/, /keep taps on someone/, and so on.

if we only know the meaning of /dog/ we also know the meaning of /dogs/. Thus, we can decompose /dogs/ into two parts: /dog/ and /s/. The minimal parts of speech that bear meaning are called morphemes. Often, it is tacitly assumed that a morpheme is a part of a word; bigger chunks are called idioms. Idioms are /kick the bucket/, /keep taps on someone/, and so on. The reason for this division is that while idioms are intransparent as far as their meaning is concerned (if you die you do not literally kick a bucket), syntactically they often behave as if they are made from words (for example, they inflect: /John kicked the bucket/).