Words we may believe are neutral yet have restricted connotations
Edit:
Perhaps a list of words prone to mis-use would serve the need, here.
Is anyone aware of a resource that lists words with emotional baggage?
Example: I use the expression 'enormity of x' (as in, the enormity of time since the big bang.)
Someone mentioned to me that the word 'enormity' is associated with negative actions, like crimes. And indeed, Merriam Webster agrees. This is the first awareness I've had of that connotation.
Enormousness seems like an awkward alternative word. To many 's's' not crisp enough. Is 'immensity' laden with baggage?
Is there a resource of such words that may have pigeonholed usage? This is a hard question because every word has a flavor. I have to wonder if the sciences use 'enormity' in a neutral way and if that may be how I learned the word.
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Many, if not all, words can have emotional baggage.
Words can have many different, and sometimes opposite connotations, and different situtations, places, countries, etc. can give different connotations to the same words.
Colours are the simplest example. Red can mean 'passion', 'danger', 'love', 'blood', and 'special'. White is used for weddings in some cultures; for funerals in others.
Words don't 'pigeonholded usage'; they have culturally defined meanings. These meanings are, in post-modernist parlance, infinitely deferred.
I'm not sure that the issue with enormity is that it has emotional baggage. The issue is that it has restricted usage -- it is only use in certain constructions such as "enormity of the crime". This is not a matter of emotional baggage so much as simply an accident of the development of standard usage.
Other words with similarly restricted usage include: nether, bated, riddance, and petard. There is a list of some such words in the Wikipedia entry on Fossil words: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word. These fossil words are perhaps a more restricted case than "enormity" since most of them occur only in a single idiom. But I think the same general idea applies: they are words that continue to be used only in restricted cases and limited constructions.
As for emotional baggage, many words can have emotional baggage, but mostly it depends on the context in which they are used. There are, of course, some trigger words that set off an instant response no matter how they are used. Some of these are durable. Some lose their trigger status after the events they are associated with fade from consciousness. If you Google for "trigger words" you will find lots of lists, though they seem to focus on the ones to use rather than the ones to avoid.
In any case, while individual words can have emotional overtones, to really evoke emotions you need to tell a story. This can be a very brief story, using only a few words, but it is stories, not words, that pack real emotional punch. Indeed, to the extent that words have emotional overtones it is because they trigger a memory of stories.
The other thing about using a story to evoke emotion rather than a word is that a story is a much more accurate instrument for the job. The emotional overtones of words can be all over the map, because they can suggest different stories to different people. By telling a story, you control which story the reader receives and therefore control the emotional response much more.
As a practical matter google's "define: [word]" will usually give you a sense of the emotional baggage heavy enough to affect the meanings.
Not sure of an easy way to check if the connotations match without having a beta reader point it out or looking it up, though, sorry. You could limit your writing to words with connotations you feel rock solid about (the highlight of Munroe's Thing Explainer is certainly its limited vocabulary) and many people do prefer lucid over complex prose anyway, but that can be less fun ;)
(To me time is more 2D than 3D, so I'd say something like "extensive time" (or interminable to be more humorous) instead of immensity or enormity. Enormous doesn't have the same bad connotations as enormity which may be why enormity escaped your notice)
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