The phrase "modern connotations" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to ideas or associations that are associated with something in the present day. For example, "The word 'trendy' has modern connotations of stylishness and modernity."
The modern connotations of the word "empire" also show how the context of imperialism has changed.
Legal historians identify suretyship with situations that are quite outside the modern connotations of the term.
A bicycle is not intimidating – it's a toy – but it has a lot of modern connotations of acceleration, being on top of one's destiny.
Royalty needs these modern connotations and its female stars, but it is in fact a deeply old-fashioned patriarchal institution, positively medieval in the case of Monaco.
It was apparently at this time, too, that the word "intellectual" assumed its modern connotations, with writers and thinkers acquiring a prestige in public debate that they have retained in France to this day.
When I started working on Chekhov's The Seagull, I had no idea that modern connotations of the seagull as scavenger would help people enter the world of the play.
In Odysseus' absence, the character of Mentor advised Telemachus, Odysseus' son -- hence the modern connotation of the word of "mentor" as "adviser".
The term "manchild" has modern negative connotations, but in the context of Isaac Heeney, it's used with nothing but praise.
The poem, "Pamphilus; or, Concerning Love," somehow became associated with unbound booklets (we say "somehow," because the word's modern political connotations didn't emerge until the 17th century).
All that can be said is that there is an obvious tension between the ritual and its modern-day connotations.
In popular usage, the modern non-Buddhist connotations of the word Zen have become so prominent that in many cases the term is used as a label for phenomena that lack any relationship to Zen or are even antithetical to its teachings and practices.
