conjure up

present singular third person conjures up · participle present conjuring up · participle past conjured up · past conjured up

1. transitiveTo create or produce something, seemingly magically.

   Synonyms: whip up

2. transitiveTo call up or command a spirit or devil by an incantation.
3. transitiveTo generate (an image or an idea) in one's mind.

   For his part, he told the New York Times in 2019 that he didn’t feel he could conjure up the requisite malevolence to play certain roles.

   2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC

   3 more examples

   Like most persons utterly unused to deception, she could not imagine how it was to be managed; and her thoughts conjured up every probable and improbable embarrassment that might occur.

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 252

   All the fairy tales of my childhood were conjured up before my startled imagination, and appeared to be realised in the forms which surrounded me; I saw the whole forest filled with trolls, elves, and sporting dwarfs.

   1881, P. Chr. Asbjörnsen [i.e., Peter Christen Asbjørnsen], “A Summer Night in a Norwegian Forest”, in H. L. Brækstad, transl., Round the Yule Log. Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, →OCLC, page 281

   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