conceive

I conceived or developed in my mind the idea of a new wheelchair basketball game when I was stuck in the hospital. Being shut in like that made me conceive or design a plan to move around as much as possible. My brother was the one who conceived or thought up using hospital trash cans for baskets at either end of the hall. The nurse whose food trays we kept on knocking over while playing looked like she was conceiving or thinking up ways to give us more shots to make us pay for doing so!

Quiz: Try again! What happens when you conceive something?

• You form a thought or idea about it.
• You think about it for a long time.
• You fully understand it, no matter how hard it is.

• ... the result was a Leonardo da Vinci, who painted his pictures, experimented with his balloons and flying machines, drained the marshes of the Lombardian plains and “expressed” his joy and interest in all things between Heaven and Earth in prose, in painting, in sculpture and in curiously conceived engines. — The Story of Mankind
• Yesterday, on conceiving the trick, I pared down a firm white turnip to resemble the end of a candle. — A Gathering of Days