concept

Borrowed from Middle French concept, from Latin conceptus (“a thought, purpose, also a conceiving, etc.”), from concipiō (“to take in, conceive”). Doublet of conceit and concetto. See conceive.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒn.sɛpt/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑn.sɛpt/

concept (plural concepts)

1. An abstract and general idea; an abstraction.
2. Understanding retained in the mind, from experience, reasoning and imagination; a generalization (generic, basic form), or abstraction (mental impression), of a particular set of instances or occurrences (specific, though different, recorded manifestations of the concept).
   • 1855, Thomas Reid, Sir W. Hamilton, James Walker, “Essay IV. Of Conception”, in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man‎:

     The words conception, concept, notion, should be limited to the thought of what can not be represented in the imagination; as, the thought suggested by a general term.

   • 2011 July 20, Edwin Mares, “Propositional Functions”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy‎, retrieved 2012-07-15:

     Frege's concepts are very nearly propositional functions in the modern sense. Frege explicitly recognizes them as functions. Like Peirce's rhema, a concept is unsaturated. They are in some sense incomplete. Although Frege never gets beyond the metaphorical in his description of the incompleteness of concepts and other functions, one thing is clear: the distinction between objects and functions is the main division in his metaphysics. There is something special about functions that makes them very different from objects.

   • 2012 March-April, Jan Sapp, “Race Finished”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 2, page 164:

     Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?

3. (generic programming) A description of supported operations on a type, including their syntax and semantics.

• conception
• notion
• abstraction

• conceptualization, conceptualisation, conceptuality
• notion
• scheme
• rule, regulation
• property, attribute, dimension
• abstraction, abstract
• quantity
• part, section, division
• whole
• law, natural law, law of nature
• hypothesis
• possibility
• theory
• fact
• rule

concept (third-person singular simple present concepts, present participle concepting, simple past and past participle concepted)

1. to conceive; to dream up

• “concept”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E Smith, editors (1911), “concept”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• concept on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Concept in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Borrowed from Middle French concept, from Latin conceptus.

• IPA^(key): /kɔnˈsɛpt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: con‧cept

concept n (plural concepten, diminutive conceptje n)

1. concept
2. draft, sketch

• conceptversie

• Afrikaans: konsep
• → Indonesian: konsep
• → Papiamentu: kònsèpt

Borrowed from Latin conceptus.

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.sɛpt/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛpt
• Homophone: concepts

concept m (plural concepts)

1. concept

   Synonyms: connaissance, idée, notion

• “concept”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Borrowed from French concept, Latin conceptus.

concept n (plural concepte)

1. concept