conception
/kənˈsɛpʃ(ə)n
/noun [mass noun]
1The action of conceiving a child or of one being conceived: an unfertilized egg before conception [count noun]: a rise in premarital conceptions...
- Defective mitochondria can slow down or prevent the growth of a fertilised egg, preventing conception.
- After all, at conception, the fertilized egg has all the information necessary to code for your physical potential.
- No one even knew about conception until recently.
Synonyms
inception of pregnancy, conceiving, fertilization, impregnation, insemination
rare fecundation
2The forming or devising of a plan or idea: the time between a product’s conception and its launch...
- Still, this was no pet project for Lauder, whose role encompassed everything from idea conception to product development to marketing.
- He said: ‘The idea was in conception before September 11 and was not a reaction to it.’
- But that's the way with novelty productions: What seems like a brilliant idea in conception often proves to have very stubby legs in the real world.
Synonyms
inception, genesis, origination, creation, formation, formulation, invention;
beginning, origin
2.1 [count noun] The way in which something is perceived or regarded: our conception of how language relates to reality...
- As I said I think at the beginning, we are an unhealthy society in regard to our conceptions of aging.
- Nonetheless, each perspective defines hegemony with regard to different conceptions of agency.
- Instead, feminist conceptions of objectivity are procedural.
2.2 [count noun] An abstract idea; a concept: the conception of a balance of power...
- We may call this an unwarrantable and indeed incomprehensible leap from the abstract intellectual conceptions of mathematics to the solid realities of nature.
- We know that abstract conceptions such as ‘time’ and ‘flour’ can be hard to grasp for most people.
- However, these are quite abstract conceptions, taken out of historical and social context.
Synonyms
idea, concept, notion, conceptualization, understanding, abstraction;
theory, hypothesis, postulation;
perception, image, impression, picture
2.3 [count noun] A plan or intention: reconstructing Bach’s original conceptions...
- To prize autonomy is to respect the conception of others, to weigh their plans for themselves heavily in deciding what is good for them: but children do not start out with plans or conceptions.
- In this recent revision, Beck proposed a new conception for the structure and processes involved in psychopathology.
- Bold in his strategic conceptions, McClellan nevertheless dreaded the actual execution of his plans.
Synonyms
plan, scheme, project, proposal, proposition, design, outline;
intention, aim, idea
2.4Ability to imagine; understanding: the administration had no conception of women’s problems...
- The common throng had no conception of his problems; all of them thought being a dictator was the end-all.
- That is why I think this is such an artificial foundation for deriving a rule nowadays from a case that had no conception of the Internet.
- The idiot potter who made it had no conception of the true power of words and what they can do.
Synonyms
understanding, ability to understand, ability to imagine, comprehension, appreciation, knowledge, grasp, apprehension;
idea, inkling
informal clue about
Derivatives
conceptional
/ adjective ...- This year boasts a refreshing mix of the figurative and the conceptional.
- Some workers in India suggest that BCG vaccination can be successfully done in infants at 34 wk post conceptional age or above and at 1800 g weight.
- One of the most important formal patterns enabling the creation of associational conceptional networks in silent comedy is the sight gag.
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from Latin conceptio(n-), from the verb concipere (see conceive).