All 20 Uses of
conceive
in
The Magic Mountain
- He was bright enough to meet the demands of a modern secondary school without overtaxing himself; in fact, under no conceivable circumstances would he have been willing to do that, no matter what the goal—not so much out of fear that it might be painful as because he saw absolutely no reason why he should, or to put it better: no unequivocal reason.†
Chpt 2.2
- So that it might well be that Hans Castorp would join up with the radicals, turn out to be a go-getter, a profane destroyer of old buildings and beautiful landscapes, as footloose as a Jew, as irreverent as an American, a man likely to prefer a ruthless break with venerable traditions to cautious development of natural resources, a man who would plunge the state into reckless experiments— that was conceivable, too.†
Chpt 2.2
- It's really totally inconceivable how of all things in the world I could have ...†
Chpt 3.9inconceivable = totally unlikely or impossible to understandstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivable means not and reverses the meaning of conceivable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- But although that seemed to be his final remark at first, he was not at all prepared to let the subject drop and almost exhausted himself asking questions about every conceivable detail: about the picture itself—its size and whether it was just a head or a seated portrait—about the hours when the sittings were held.†
Chpt 5.2
- This is the purpose oi our Sociological Pathology, an encyclopedia of some twenty or so volumes that will list and discuss all conceivable instances of human suffering, from the most personal and intimate to the large-scale conflicts of groups that arise out of class hostility and international strife.†
Chpt 5.5
- In its serious pursuit of variations on this standard procedure, nature had employed every conceivable farce and grotesquerie.†
Chpt 5.7
- He was used to it and was grateful for the opportunity that the local style of life—which for him had long since become the only conceivable style—provided him to lie there safe and secure and think things through.†
Chpt 6.4
- No other course of action was conceivable, or so it seemed.†
Chpt 6.5
- To what extent Hans Castorp's calm, callous self-assurance made things seem that way, and to what extent they actually were that way, making any other course of action indeed inconceivable and impossible—that was, from the very start, something no well-bred gentleman could have decided.†
Chpt 6.5inconceivable = totally unlikely or impossible to understandstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inconceivable means not and reverses the meaning of conceivable. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- The envoy's life proceeded along the tracks laid down for him, and it seemed inconceivable it could have proceeded any other way.†
Chpt 6.5 *
- His opponent's contempt for the love of literary form, he cried, only too plainly revealed a taste for the frenzied barbarism of certain epochs, but without such a love no true humanity was possible, or even conceivable, not now, not ever.†
Chpt 6.8
- Water plunged in a maddening cacophony of every conceivable noise and tone: thunders and hisses, howlings, boomings, tattoos, cracks, rattles, throbbings, and chimings—you truly could not hear yourself think.†
Chpt 7.5
- That would continue until the next fad took over—when, for instance, the collection and incessant consumption of chocolate in every conceivable form might become the fashion.†
Chpt 7.6
- As some innocent from the country, an average fellow who strolled about laughing, stuffing his belly, and earning money—a model pupil in the school of life, who could conceive of nothing except the boring advantages of respectability?†
Chpt 5.4
- Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, taught about a ladder of perfection unlike anything Herr Lodovico has ever conceived in his wildest dreams.†
Chpt 6.2
- You know very well, as do these young gentlemen, that the human progress of which I speak is conceived as infinite.†
Chpt 6.2 *
- Can you even conceive that there might be any objections, professor—even objections based purely on consistency?†
Chpt 6.3
- I can well conceive of that.†
Chpt 6.8
- You can conceive of very little, my good engineer.†
Chpt 6.8
- Do not presume that you can conceive of much of anything on your own, but rather attempt to receive and ponder.†
Chpt 6.8
Definitions:
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(1)
(conceive as in: conceive the idea) to originate, understand, or imagine
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(2)
(conceive as in: conceived their first child) become pregnant or fertilize an egg