- conceit
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/keuhn seet"/, n.1. an excessively favorable opinion of one's own ability, importance, wit, etc.2. something that is conceived in the mind; a thought; idea: He jotted down the conceits of his idle hours.3. imagination; fancy.4. a fancy; whim; fanciful notion.5. an elaborate, fanciful metaphor, esp. of a strained or far-fetched nature.6. the use of such metaphors as a literary characteristic, esp. in poetry.7. a fancy, purely decorative article.8. Brit. Dial.a. favorable opinion; esteem.b. personal opinion or estimation.9. Obs. the faculty of conceiving; apprehension.10. out of conceit with, displeased or dissatisfied with.v.t.11. to flatter (esp. oneself).12. Brit. Dial. to take a fancy to; have a good opinion of.13. Obs.a. to imagine.b. to conceive; apprehend.[1350-1400; ME conceyte, conceipt, deriv. of CONCEIVE by analogy with DECEIVE, DECEIT and RECEIVE, RECEIPT; cf. AF conceite; see CONCEPT]Ant. 1. humility.
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figure of speech, usually a simile or metaphor, that forms an extremely ingenious or fanciful parallel between apparently dissimilar or incongruous objects or situations. The Petrarchan conceit, which was especially popular with Renaissance writers of sonnets, is a hyperbolic comparison made generally by a suffering lover of his beautiful and cruel mistress to some physical object—e.g., a tomb, the ocean, the sun. The metaphysical conceit, associated with the Metaphysical poets of the 17th century, is a more intricate and intellectual device. It usually sets up an analogy between one entity's spiritual qualities and an object in the physical world and sometimes controls the whole structure of the poem. For example, in the following stanzas from “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” John Donne (Donne, John) compares two lovers' souls to a draftsman's compass:If they be two, they are two soAs stiffe twin compasses are two,Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no showTo move, but doth, if the'other doe.And though it in the center sit,Yet when the other far doth rome,It leanes, and hearkens after it,And growes erect, as that comes home.Conceits often were so farfetched as to become absurd, degenerating in the hands of lesser poets into strained ornamentation. With the advent of Romanticism they fell into disfavour along with other poetic artifices. In the late 19th century they were revived by the French Symbolists and are commonly found, although in brief and condensed form, in the works of such modern poets as Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
