Hi
Most of the definitions for conceit, as used in journalism today, don’t seem to square with this definition:
Most definitions of conceit go something like this:
“Conceit develops a comparison which is exceedingly unlikely but is, nonetheless, intellectually imaginative. A comparison turns into a conceit when the writer tries to make us admit a similarity between two things of whose unlikeness we are strongly conscious and for this reason, conceits are often surprising.” I would really like a better definition.
I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
All truths are subject to examination (or at least that is a highly-favoured conceit).
Objectivity—the faith professed by American journalism and by its critics—is less an ideal than a conceit.
Even if you were naïve enough to believe that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was actually listening to anything through her mercifully brief “listening tour” to Iowa — during which she met with a handful of hand-selected and bused-in Democratic activists — the whole adventure demonstrates what Nobel prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek called “the Fatal Conceit.”
All that remains to be seen is whether Hillary Clinton’s conceit is fatal to her presidential hopes or to the nation’s aspirations for a thriving future. The 2016 election will surely kill one of them.
The Posts’ Gene Weingarten took the first crack in a recent column. Weingarten frets and willakers because Ben Huh the LOLcats guy is delivering future-of-media keynote addresses instead of someone older and more boring like Bob Woodward. Weingarten litters his copy with what I think he thinks is a cute conceit, repeatedly linking to pictures of cats. (You fool. Your cats should be inline images.
It isn’t a journalism conceit. The brutal conditions are across the Special Economic Zone. Other places’ violations are even more terrible than the ones that Apple has been caught with. The stories that come out of Samsung are even worse.
How would you define “conceit” in the following example?
I have now become convinced that President Obama’s biggest problem is that he believes — wrongly — that he (or his people) know better how to allocate resources than do the many millions of “men and women on the spot.” This is the thing that keeps our very smart President from being a wise President. It is killing economic expansion in this country, and it may well render him a one-term President. It is, quite literally, a fatal conceit.
It seems to me that the word “conceit” is being used interchangeably with “trope” these days. Not sure.
Trope as a Buzzword
"The new word-that-must-be-used is ‘trope,’ meaning metaphor, example, literary device, picture–and maybe whatever else the writer wants it to mean.
"The main meaning of ‘trope’ is ‘figure of speech.’ . . .
"But as I’ve noted before, the sense has been extended to something vaguer and less effective, like ‘theme,’ ‘motif’ or ‘image.’
I’ve always considered conceit to be the same as self-assurance. . Someone may be conceited or self-assured about their conclusions independently of whether those conclusions are correct, or even reasonable.
There’s no perfect definition of the word ‘conceit’. As a personal attribute it tends to mean ‘having a high opinion of oneself’. In popular journalistic use, it seems to be used interchangeably with ‘concept’, especially when one wants to smuggle in some negative connotation.
When I try to think of a conceit proper, I think of the gravelly voiced movie preview narrator beginning with the immortal phrase “In a world…”. Whatever comes after that is the central conceit. The conceit is usually interesting enough to make you watch the first few minutes of the movie (or article) to see if anything interesting shakes out.
If a conceit is very popular, then other writers may reuse its basic form. This spreading form of the conceit is called a trope.
Yes; in the passage davidmich quoted from, it certainly sounds like the writer is accusing Obama of being conceited: of having too high an opinion of himself or his abilities, knowledge, etc.
This is one meaning of the word “conceit.” Not to be confused with the literary device conceit, which is a type of unexpected comparison or extended metaphor.
Quite why we use the same word to mean “a concept” and “an over-high opinion of oneself”, I don’t know. But I think there’s a sort of link in that both imply some degree of fanciful assumption, not necessarily founded in reality. I’ve always understood “a conceit” (in literary terms) to mean something along the lines of an assumption for the purposes of argument or an imagined idea for the sake of entertainment, that’s understood not to be an attempt at realism. It’s not too far a leap from that to calling someone “conceited” when their idea of themselves doesn’t appear (to others) to be justified.
From the same root as conceived in the sense of “take into the mind” is from mid-14c., a figurative sense also found in the Old French and Latin words.
And there’s the definition for the “concept” definition I see in other dictionaries. They all refer to it as “fanciful” or “imaginative.”
But, in writing it, I think there’s a better word. It’s clearly not just a concept. It’s an assumption. To put it in a full definition: “an assumption that is considered incorrect or suspect.”
Though I do wonder if it’s starting to pick up some meaning from the similarly sounding (but etymologically unrelated) word “concede.” I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people use it as a synonym for “concession.” Confer the second-to-last example in the OP.