Emotion word is an ambiguous concept: dividing, defining, and connecting emotion-label words and emotion-laden words.

We argue that emotion words can be divided into two subcategories: emotion-label words and emotion-laden words. We believe that the term "emotion word" should not solely refer to emotion-label words, since emotion-laden words also contain emotional content, and both emotion-label words and emotion-laden words play important roles in creating emotions. Based on the division of emotion-laden words and emotion-label words, the two types of words can be defined by measuring their emotional prototypicality, along with lexicographic definitions and syntactic analyses. The emotion word type perspective also acknowledges the interdependence between the two types of emotion words. Emotion-label words categorise and abstract continuous emotional episodes, while emotion-laden words instantiate and contextualise these episodes. This perspective is informative for emotion theories by highlighting unique contributions of two types of words.