CONCEIVE OF

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does conceive of mean? 

• CONCEIVE OF (verb)
  The verb CONCEIVE OF has 1 sense:

1. form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case

  Familiarity information: CONCEIVE OF used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONCEIVE OF (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Form a mental image of something that is not present or that is not the case

Classified under:

Verbs of sewing, baking, painting, performing

Synonyms:

conceive of; envisage; ideate; imagine

Context example:

Can you conceive of him as the president?

Hypernyms (to "conceive of" is one way to...):

create by mental act; create mentally (create mentally and abstractly rather than with one's hands)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "conceive of"):

envision; fancy; figure; image; picture; project; see; visualise; visualize (imagine; conceive of; see in one's mind)

visualise; visualize (form a mental picture of something that is invisible or abstract)

envision; foresee (picture to oneself; imagine possible)

fantasise; fantasize (portray in the mind)

prefigure (imagine or consider beforehand)

think (imagine or visualize)

fantasise; fantasize; fantasy (indulge in fantasies)

daydream; dream; stargaze; woolgather (have a daydream; indulge in a fantasy)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

 Context examples 

He stood in the shadow of an oak staring at her with parted lips, for this woman seemed to him to be the most beautiful and graceful creature that mind could conceive of.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The best state of well-being an individual can conceive of experiencing.

(Best Imaginable Health, NCI Thesaurus)

He did not conceive of her body as a body, subject to the ills and frailties of bodies.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, “that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)