concept
verbEtymology 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.
1
To conceive; to dream up.
concept
nounUK /ˈkɒn.sɛpt/ · US /ˈkɑn.sɛpt/
Etymology 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.
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).
- 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.1855, Thomas Reid, Sir W. Hamilton, James Walker, “Essay IV. Of Conception”, in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man:
- 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.2011 July 20, Edwin Mares, “Propositional Functions”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, retrieved 15 Jul 2012:
1 more example
- 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?2012 March-April, Jan Sapp, “Race Finished”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 05 Sep 2015, page 164:
3
A description of supported operations on a type, including their syntax and semantics.
Generic programming
- Synonyms
- conception, notion, abstraction
- Derived terms
29 terms
closed-concept, concept album, concept art, concept artist, concept car, concept drift, conceptious, conceptless, concept map, concept of operations, conceptor, concept video, gap concept, high concept, high-concept, macroconcept, metaconcept, microconcept, multiconcept, open-concept, operating concept, preconcept, primitive concept, proof of concept, proof-of-concept, pseudoconcept, puncept, self-concept, subconcept- Related terms
- conceive, conceptional, conceptive, conceptual, misconceive, misconception, essential, fundamental, idea, meaning, pattern, thought
- Hyponyms
- 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