Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To form (an opinion, for example) before possessing full or adequate knowledge or experience.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To form a conception, notion, or idea of, in advance of actual knowledge.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To conceive, or form an opinion of, beforehand; to form a previous notion or idea of.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To conceive, or form an opinion of, beforehand; to form a previous notion or idea of.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb conceive beforehand

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The algorithms which run our lives, the websites which sell us stuff even when we don't know it, which track our supposed wants and desires...they cannot yet track and preconceive our intuition...and that, along with feeling and not simply thinking, will be humanity's saving grace.

    Vivian Norris: Allowing for Synchronicity During These Times of Upheaval Vivian Norris 2012

  • The algorithms which run our lives, the websites which sell us stuff even when we don't know it, which track our supposed wants and desires...they cannot yet track and preconceive our intuition...and that, along with feeling and not simply thinking, will be humanity's saving grace.

    Vivian Norris: Allowing for Synchronicity During These Times of Upheaval Vivian Norris 2012

  • They refuse to preconceive what matters and what doesn't.

    Exhibit review of Spencer Finch's 'My Business, With the Cloud' at the Corcoran 2010

  • If somebody listened to Senator Obama just there in Candy's piece in earlier today, and heard him drop those hints, somebody whose strong on the economy, somebody who is willing to challenge me, stand up to me fight against my preconceive notions.

    CNN Transcript Aug 21, 2008 2008

  • I had nothing on my agenda, so I didn't preconceive those ideas.

    sheepdip Diary Entry sheepdip 2001

  • But archaeologists are the narrowest and dryest of men, -- they preconceive a certain system of work and follow it out by mathematical rule and plan, without one touch of imagination to help them to discover new channels of interest or historical information.

    Ziska Marie Corelli 1889

  • He had a certain shame about his neighbors 'errors, and never spoke of them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert his mind from the best mode of hardening timber and other ingenious devices in order to preconceive those errors.

    Middlemarch: a study of provincial life (1900) 1871

  • He had a certain shame about his neighbors 'errors, and never spoke of them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert his mind from the best mode of hardening timber and other ingenious devices in order to preconceive those errors.

    Middlemarch 1871

  • So my purpose was to discover him; and I made calculations, and summoned them that serve me to search for such a youth as thou art; fairly, O my betrothed, did I preconceive thee.

    The Shaving of Shagpat; an Arabian entertainment — Volume 2 George Meredith 1868

  • So my purpose was to discover him; and I made calculations, and summoned them that serve me to search for such a youth as thou art; fairly, O my betrothed, did I preconceive thee.

    The Shaving of Shagpat; an Arabian entertainment — Complete George Meredith 1868

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