Definition of "conceit" []

• A favorable and especially unduly high opinion of one's own abilities or worth. (noun)
• An ingenious or witty turn of phrase or thought. (noun)
• A fanciful poetic image, especially an elaborate or exaggerated comparison. (noun)
• A poem or passage consisting of such an image. (noun)
• The result of intellectual activity; a thought or an opinion. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "His persons, however distressed, _have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit_."
• "This would be true by definition; just as the investigation and explication of the conceit is what defines the process as fabulation, the source and nature of the main conceit (s) is what defines the process as scientific."
• "If it's all strange fiction, if a conceit is a conceit (and can be explained, excused or exploited) regardless of whether it's counterfactual, hypothetical or metaphysical, we have problems, I think, in sticking to Suvin's term "novum"."