conception

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Formation of a viable zygote by the union of the male sperm and female ovum; fertilization.
• noun The entity formed by the union of the male sperm and female ovum; an embryo or zygote.
• noun The ability to form or understand mental concepts and abstractions.
• noun Something conceived in the mind or believed by a group of people; a concept, thought, or belief: synonym: idea.
• noun The beginning or formation of an idea or plan.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act or power of conceiving in the mind, or of forming a concept; that which is conceived in the mind.
• noun In philosophy: The act of conceiving or of forming a concept, or the concept itself; a notion.
• noun Improperly, the faculty of reproductive imagination.
• noun Thought, notion, or idea, in a loose sense: as, you have no conception how clever he is.
• noun A fanciful thought; a conceit.
• noun The act of becoming pregnant; the beginning of pregnancy; the inception of the life of an embryo; hence, figuratively, beginning; origination.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of conceiving in the womb; the initiation of an embryonic animal life.
• noun The state of being conceived; beginning.
• noun The power or faculty of apprehending of forming an idea in the mind; the power of recalling a past sensation or perception.
• noun The formation in the mind of an image, idea, or notion, apprehension.
• noun The image, idea, or notion of any action or thing which is formed in the mind; a concept; a notion; a universal; the product of a rational belief or judgment. See Concept.
• noun Idea; purpose; design.
• noun obsolete Conceit; affected sentiment or thought.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The act of conceiving.
• noun The state of being conceived; the beginning.
• noun The fertilization of an ovum by a sperm to form a zygote.
• noun The start of pregnancy.
• noun The formation of a conceptus or an implanted embryo.
• noun The power or faculty of apprehending of forming an idea in the mind; the power of recalling a past sensation or perception; the ability to form mental abstractions.
• noun An image, idea, or notion formed in the mind; a concept, plan or design.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun an abstract or general idea inferred or derived from specific instances
• noun the creation of something in the mind
• noun the event that occurred at the beginning of something
• noun the act of becoming pregnant; fertilization of an ovum by a spermatozoon