conceptually

[ kuhn-sep-choo-uh-lee ]

adverb

1. in a way that pertains to concepts, ideas, theories, mental constructs or models, etc.:

   While web development is easy to describe conceptually, implementation involves an overwhelming array of languages, platforms, and templates.

2. in a way that pertains to design or creative vision:

   Your donation page should feel aesthetically and conceptually in line with the rest of your organization's online presence.

Other Words From

• non·con·cep·tu·al·ly adverb
• un·con·cep·tu·al·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of conceptually¹

conceptual ( def ) + -ly

Example Sentences

The project is in the conceptual design stage, but with proper funding could begin surveying the sky around the middle of the decade.

From Popular-Science

A purpose of this book is to warn Americans and their partners against making the same conceptual mistakes in Africa that they did during wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.

From Quartz

This led all early work on thermodynamics to be based on systems in a conceptual box.

From Nautilus

He criticized Newton’s “conceptual monstrosity of absolute space”—the idea of space as a thing unto itself.

From Nautilus

While the work is still early, Wolf sees their work as an important conceptual breakthrough in getting unsupervised learning to work for visual-language models.

From MIT Technology Review

Conceptually, the “Angel of Death” was a cultural mainstay in continental Europe and the British Isles by the late Middle Ages.

From The Daily Beast

In France, he frequented the Surrealists, conceptually drawing from their principles of visual subversion.

From The Daily Beast

Instead, busing was a failure—conceptually and substantively—because of faulty liberal assumptions.

From The Daily Beast

“With Bar Ama, what I wanted to do, conceptually, was to take the ideas around Tex-Mex and make them my own,” he said.

From The Daily Beast

He says the project is not about the end product itself, but about breaking another boundary, conceptually.

From The Daily Beast

Whatever a dozen men may agree on conceptually, will be differently thought of by any one woman.

From Project Gutenberg

Any concept can comprehend conceptually only one object, not another object together with this.

From Project Gutenberg

The aggregate of similar experiences, hence of experiences conceptually generalized, we shall call things.

From Project Gutenberg

We need not regard them conceptually as unchangeable or irreplaceable.

From Project Gutenberg

That is, it is felt as repeated and conceptually comprehended.

From Project Gutenberg