1
as in metaphor
an elaborate or fanciful way of expressing something
the conceit that the crowd at the outdoor rock concert was a vast sea of people waving to the beat of the music
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2
as in illusion
a conception or image created by the imagination and having no objective reality
his dream of swimming in the Olympics is nothing more than a conceit
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in vanity
an often unjustified feeling of being pleased with oneself or with one's situation or achievements
even though her novels are enormously popular, the writer is more prone to humility than to conceit
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in to imagine
to form a mental picture of
after a huge meal like that, I cannot conceit eating another thing for the rest of the day
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of conceit
PC Magazine, 2 Dec. 2025
On the writing front, the screenplay organically makes the time gaps fluid and natural, a tricky conceit to pull off.
—Randy Myers, Mercury News, 2 Dec. 2025
Chen’s skillful restraint prevents the conceit from ever taking over the book.
—Emma Alpern, Vulture, 2 Dec. 2025
The futuristic conceit is even propelled by this contemporaneous sensibility.
—Tim Griffin, Artforum, 1 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for conceit
Noun
Many abilities returning from prior games, like Samus’s compact Morph Ball form or the grapple beam, are tweaked by the new psychic powers conceit.
—Recent Examples of Synonyms for conceit
Noun
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This concept is brought to life by the characters’ perilous physical and psychological journey, constantly suspended between destruction and renewal, reality and metaphor.—
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With relentless howling wind making up much of the soundtrack, The Turin Horse was a chilling, enigmatic stunner that played like a metaphor for the apocalypse.—
Noun
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Still, there are some footwear styles and silhouettes that work better for women on the shorter side, helping give the illusion of a higher stature.—
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Her sister, Kali, has the power to create illusions, so the Eleven that everyone witnessed in her final moments could have been fake, and the real Eleven could have slipped away without being detected.—
Noun
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Posing on top of an antique vanity and inside a wooden cabinet, Bieber cycled through a parade of sheer lace, see-through mesh, and strappy designs in shades of red, black, pink, and cream.—
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Store liquids—such as lotion, makeup, perfumes, and skincare—on a tray to protect your vanity table or bathroom cabinet.—
Verb
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One of those techniques involves an empty chair placed in front of a client, encouraging them to imagine and speak to someone connected to unresolved emotions.—
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One way around this is to give the subject something else to imagine—another place, another conversation, a passing feeling—just long enough for the shutter, at one two-hundredth of a second, to catch something real.—
Noun
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But as his son’s college dreams were coming into focus, Dominique thought about his own path and upbringing.—
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Most cops have hero dreams, protector fantasies that sustain them through days that are mostly mundane.—
Noun
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His on-field poise and ego-free personality are a combination that will be an easy sell to an NFL locker room.—
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The ego, the hardness, the … callousness of anything that might be on the heart or the mind had literally just melted away.—
Verb
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In late 2020, Farr had a wildly vivid dream envisioning a black car driving through the Colombian mountains, en route to a monastery.—
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Wuthering Heights was always envisioned as a kind of fantastical fever dream—a contemporary take on a ’50s soundstage melodrama that gleefully mixes historical references with glitzy modernity.—
Noun
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And, once again, fantasies of surgical strikes are yielding to messy realities.—
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As that tension escalates, battles — between good and evil, fantasy and reality, collapse and triumph — ensue.—
Cite this Entry
“Conceit.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/conceit. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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