A fanciful, odd, or extravagant notion; a quant fancy; an unnatural or affected conception; a witty thought or turn of expression; a fanciful device; a whim; a quip.
An overweening idea of one's self; vanity.
To form an idea; to think.
(LTC) A metaphor describes one thing in terms of another: for example, "a granite jaw". A conceit is a far-fetched metaphor in which a very unlikely connection between two things is established. A famous example is Donne's description of lovers' souls as being like the two legs of a pair of compasses(see "A valediction Forbidding Mourning", c.1600).
An elaborated or extended, perhaps overextended, figure. Archaic sense: jokes, humorous speeches, et cetera as in "The historye of Henry iiiith with the battell at Shrewsburie, betweene the King and Lord Henry Percie, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the North. With the humorous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstaffe" [title of the First Quarto].
a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness, or, at least, is more immediately striking
a fanciful notion, generally expressed through an elaborate analogy or metaphor
a far-fetched and ingenious comparsion
a figure of speech which makes an unusual and sometimes elaborately sustained comparison between two dissimilar things
Derived from the verb 'to conceive' and used for a fanciful idea (eg an ornamental structure with little or no use).
A fanciful poetic image or metaphor that likens one thing to something else that is seemingly very different. An example of a conceit can be found in Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and in Emily Dickinson's poem "There is no frigate like a book."
Extended metaphor. Term used to describe Renaissance metaphysical poetry in England and colonial poetry, such as that of Anne Bradstreet, in colonial America.
a witty extended metaphor
An elaborate and complicated metaphor. An early exponent of conceits was the 14th Century Italian poet Petrarch. The Petrarchan conceit was imitated by many Elizabethan poets including Shakespeare. Conceits were also used extensively by the metaphysical poets. John Donne famously compared two lovers to a pair of compasses in his poem A Valediction: forbidding Mourning.
In literary terms, a conceit from Wiktionary is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs an entire poem or poetic passage. By juxtaposing images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison.