Concept vs. Idea

Conceptnoun

abstract and general idea; an abstraction

Ideanoun

(philosophy) An abstract archetype of a given thing, compared to which real-life examples are seen as imperfect approximations; pure essence, as opposed to actual examples.

Conceptnoun

understanding retained in the mind, from experience, reasoning and/or imagination; a generalization (generic, basic form), or abstraction (mental impression), of a particular set of instances or occurrences (specific, though different, recorded manifestations of the concept).

Ideanoun

(obsolete) The conception of someone or something as representing a perfect example; an ideal.

Conceptnoun

(programming) In generic programming, a description of supported operations on a type, including their syntax and semantics.

Ideanoun

(obsolete) The form or shape of something; a quintessential aspect or characteristic.

Conceptnoun

An abstract general conception; a notion; a universal.

‘The words conception, concept, notion, should be limited to the thought of what can not be represented in the imagination; as, the thought suggested by a general term.’;

Ideanoun

An image of an object that is formed in the mind or recalled by the memory.

‘The mere idea of you is enough to excite me.’;

Conceptnoun

an abstract or general idea inferred or derived from specific instances

Ideanoun

More generally, any result of mental activity; a thought, a notion; a way of thinking.

Conceptnoun

an abstract idea

‘structuralism is a difficult concept’; ‘the concept of justice’;

Ideanoun

A conception in the mind of something to be done; a plan for doing something, an intention.

‘I have an idea of how we might escape.’;

Conceptnoun

a plan or intention

‘the centre has kept firmly to its original concept’;

Ideanoun

A purposeful aim or goal; intent

‘If you keep sweet-talking her like that, you're going to talk her right out of her pants.’;

Conceptnoun

an idea or invention to help sell or publicize a commodity

‘a new concept in corporate hospitality’;

Ideanoun

A vague or fanciful notion; a feeling or hunch; an impression.

‘He had the wild idea that if he leant forward a little, he might be able to touch the mountain-top.’;

Conceptnoun

(of a car or other vehicle) produced as an experimental model to test the viability of innovative design features

‘a concept car for next month's Geneva motor show’;

Ideanoun

(music) A musical theme or melodic subject.

Conceptnoun

an idea or mental image which corresponds to some distinct entity or class of entities, or to its essential features, or determines the application of a term (especially a predicate), and thus plays a part in the use of reason or language.

Ideanoun

The transcript, image, or picture of a visible object, that is formed by the mind; also, a similar image of any object whatever, whether sensible or spiritual.

‘Her sweet idea wandered through his thoughts.’; ‘Being the right idea of your fatherBoth in your form and nobleness of mind.’; ‘This representation or likeness of the object being transmitted from thence [the senses] to the imagination, and lodged there for the view and observation of the pure intellect, is aptly and properly called its idea.’;

Concept

Concepts are defined as abstract ideas or general notions that occur in the mind, in speech, or in thought. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of thoughts and beliefs.

Ideanoun

A general notion, or a conception formed by generalization.

‘Alice had not the slightest idea what latitude was.’;

Ideanoun

Hence: Any object apprehended, conceived, or thought of, by the mind; a notion, conception, or thought; the real object that is conceived or thought of.

‘Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or as the immediate object of perception, thought, or undersanding, that I call idea.’;

Ideanoun

A belief, option, or doctrine; a characteristic or controlling principle; as, an essential idea; the idea of development.

‘That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.’; ‘What is now "idea" for us? How infinite the fall of this word, since the time where Milton sang of the Creator contemplating his newly-created world, -"how it showed . . . Answering his great idea," -to its present use, when this person "has an idea that the train has started," and the other "had no idea that the dinner would be so bad!"’;

Ideanoun

A plan or purpose of action; intention; design.

‘I shortly afterwards set off for that capital, with an idea of undertaking while there the translation of the work.’;

Ideanoun

A rational conception; the complete conception of an object when thought of in all its essential elements or constituents; the necessary metaphysical or constituent attributes and relations, when conceived in the abstract.

Ideanoun

A fiction object or picture created by the imagination; the same when proposed as a pattern to be copied, or a standard to be reached; one of the archetypes or patterns of created things, conceived by the Platonists to have excited objectively from eternity in the mind of the Deity.

‘Thence to behold this new-created world,The addition of his empire, how it showedIn prospect from his throne, how good, how fair,Answering his great idea.’;

Ideanoun

the content of cognition; the main thing you are thinking about;

‘it was not a good idea’; ‘the thought never entered my mind’;

Ideanoun

a personal view;

‘he has an idea that we don't like him’;

Ideanoun

an approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth;

‘an estimate of what it would cost’; ‘a rough idea how long it would take’;

Ideanoun

your intention; what you intend to do;

‘he had in mind to see his old teacher’; ‘the idea of the game is to capture all the pieces’;

Ideanoun

(music) melodic subject of a musical composition;

‘the theme is announced in the first measures’; ‘the accompanist picked up the idea and elaborated it’;

Ideanoun

a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action

‘recently, the idea of linking pay to performance has caught on’; ‘it's a good idea to do some research before you go’;

Ideanoun

a mental impression

‘our menu list will give you some idea of how interesting a low-fat diet can be’;

Ideanoun

an opinion or belief

‘nineteenth-century ideas about drinking’;

Ideanoun

the aim or purpose

‘I took a job with the idea of getting some money together’;

Ideanoun

(in Platonic thought) an eternally existing pattern of which individual things in any class are imperfect copies.

Ideanoun

(in Kantian thought) a concept of pure reason, not empirically based in experience.

Idea

In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are abstract concepts. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object.