MEANING
1. To imagine a possibility or understand something as having a particular form or character.
2. To form a new idea, plan, design, or other intended creation.
3. To become pregnant, or to bring about the conception of a child.
Use it for
describing how a theory understands its subject; acknowledging what can be imagined without claiming it exists; contrasting different conceptualizations of the same issueDistinguishes imagining or understanding a possibility, originating an idea, and biological conception. Writing functions: Theory / Conceptual Language, Analysis / Interpretation.
Words that belong together
- conceive of something as
- conceive a possibility
- conceive that something could happen
On the page
The theory conceives of institutions as relationships rather than fixed objects.
It is possible to conceive of the mechanism without yet having evidence that it operates here.
The project was conceived as a comparison of two towns, not a national survey.
She conceived the final scene before deciding how the narrator would reach it.
The family history records when the child was conceived, not when the pregnancy became known.
Word forms
- Base
- conceive
- Past tense
- conceived
- Past participle
- conceived
- Present participle
- conceiving
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- conceive
- Present continuous
- am/is/are conceiving
- Present perfect
- have/has conceived
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been conceiving
- Past
- conceived
- Past continuous
- was/were conceiving
- Past perfect
- had conceived
- Past perfect continuous
- had been conceiving
- Future
- will conceive
- Future continuous
- will be conceiving
- Future perfect
- will have conceived
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been conceiving
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Conceives, conceived, conceived, conceiving; future will conceive. Conceive of something as, conceive a plan, conceive that. Pregnancy use can be transitive or intransitive. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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