[Chiefly ad. L. concept-um (a thing) conceived, from pa. pple. of L. concip-ĕre to CONCEIVE; the pple. had also the sense ‘formal, in set form’; in late med.L. the sb. had the sense ‘draft or abstract,’ whence 16th-c. F. concept, Ger. concept: see sense 3. In some early uses it was a refashioning of CONCEIT (conceipt) after L.)

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  † 1.  = CONCEIT, in various senses: a. A thought, idea; CONCEIT sb. 1. b. Disposition, frame of mind; ibid. 2 c. c. Imagination, fancy; ibid. 7. d. Opinion; ibid. 4. Obs.

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1556.  Abp. Parker, Psalter, cxix. 355. Thy precepts … I mel with them in my concepts.

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1566–7.  Painter, Pal. Pleas., I. 33. Being in this louing concept, hee extolled the prayse of his wife to one of his guarde.

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1571.  Golding, Calvin on Ps. lxxiii. 20. We forge fantasticall toyes in our own concepts.

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1575.  in Lodge, Illust. Brit. Hist. (1791), II. 131. To confirm in hir Maty a former concept which had been labored to put into hir head.

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1591.  in Camd. Soc. Misc., I. 37. Bigger (in my concepte) than all Westminster.

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  2.  Logic and Philos. The product of the faculty of conception; an idea of a class of objects, a general notion or idea.

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1663.  G. Harvey, New Philos., I. 22. The Quiddity of a Being in general goeth more by the name of the Concept of a Being. Ibid., I. 66. Oviedo makes it a great difficulty to distinguish the concept of Peter and a horse.

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1837–8.  Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, viii. (1859), I. 134. The concept horse … cannot, if it remain a concept, that is a universal attribution, be represented in imagination. Ibid., xv. (1866), I. 275. Concepts are merely the results, rendered permanent by language, of a previous process of comparison.

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1864.  Bowen, Logic, 11. A Percept or Intuition is a single representation … a Concept is a collective (general or universal) representation of a whole class of things.

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1884.  trans. Lotze’s Logic, 36. Concepts like ‘triangle,’ ‘animal,’ or ‘motion.’

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  3.  nonce-use. [Ger. concept.] An original draft or rough copy (of a letter, etc.).

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1869.  Mrs. Heaton, A. Dürer, I. iii. (1881), 60. This letter … the original concept for it is still preserved.

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  ¶  The following is app. founded on explanations of L. conceptus, conceptio, in Cooper’s Thesaurus.

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1706.  Phillips (ed. Kersey), Concept, a set Form; a term used in Publick Acts.

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1721–1800.  Bailey, Concept, a set Form or Term used in Publick Acts.

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