concept
noun
- abstract and general idea
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈkɒn.sɛpt/ / /ˈkɑn.sɛpt/
noun
Etymology: Etymology tree Latin conceptusder. Middle French conceptbor. English concept 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.
- An abstract and general idea; an abstraction.
- 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.”
“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.”
- A description of supported operations on a type, including their syntax and semantics.
verb
Etymology: Etymology tree Latin conceptusder. Middle French conceptbor. English concept 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.
- To conceive; to dream up.