conception

plural conceptions

1. countableuncountableThe act of conceiving.
2. countableuncountableThe state of being conceived; the beginning.
3. countableuncountableThe fertilization of an ovum by a sperm to form a zygote.

   Some powers diuine, or els infernall, mixt Their angry ſeedes at his conception: For he was neuer ſprong of humaine race, Since with the ſpirit of his fearefull pride, He dares so doubtleſly reſolue of rule.

   c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene vi

4. countableuncountableThe start of pregnancy.
5. countableuncountableThe formation of a conceptus or an implanted embryo.
6. countableuncountableThe power or faculty of apprehending of forming an idea in the mind; the power of recalling a past sensation or perception; the ability to form mental abstractions.

   1 more example

   What the school books say about the united efforts of the two great Rossums is all a fairy tale. They used to have dreadful rows. The old atheist hadn't the slightest conception of industrial matters, and the end of it was that young Rossum shut him up in some laboratory or other and let him fritter the time away with his monstrosities, while he himself started on the business from an engineer's point of view.

   c. 1921 (date written), Karel Čapek, translated by Paul Selver, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama […], Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, published 1923, →OCLC, Act 1

7. countableuncountableAn image, idea, or notion formed in the mind; a concept, plan or design.

   2 more examples

   "Around the World in Eighty Days" once had so much appeal to the imagination that Jules Verne wrote a novel about it. The latest proposal is to girdle the globe in three months in a flying machine. The practicability of such a flight is here discussed by an expert. Mr. Woodhouse is a member of the Aero Club of America and managing editor of "Flying". ¶ When the Aero Club of America received the news that the Panama-Pacific International Exposition had decided to offer $300,000 in prize money for a ninety-day aircraft race around the world, no one connected with aeronautics laughed at the conception or called it the dream of a Verne or a Wells. A map of the course indicates that to circumaviate the globe will mean flights over mountains and deserts, through storms, and across seas. But formidable obstacles in all of these classifications have been surmounted before by airmen, and, of course, can be surmounted again.

   1914 February 28, Henry Woodhouse, “Girdling the Globe by Motor-Driven Aircraft”, in Collier's, volume 52, number 24, page 13

   Elegant brick and stone buildings, with iron and glass canopies and decorative wooden scalloping and fencing—all evidencing care on the part of the architect to produce a pleasing, well-planned building—were submerged beneath a profusion of ill-conceived additions and camouflaged by vulgar paint schemes; and the original conception was lost.

   1962 October, Brian Haresnape, “Focus on B.R. passenger stations”, in Modern Railways, pages 250–251

8. countableuncountableSomething conceived or designed.

   The figure was placed on a low pedestal, sufficiently raised from the carpet on four plain wooden legs for all the space underneath to be clearly visible. The body was a squat, cross-legged conception, typical of an Indian deity […]

   1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC