You know...

[archangel__7]

It may be a worthwhile study to find out the etymological root of conception as it pertains to the generation of new life. Perhaps this now technical term once was understood to have more of a metaphysical nuance tied in with it: for example, why does it make sense to say that someone can be "conceived" as though we were, from the beginning, an

Comments

[demurefemme]

it has been awhile since i've studied latin, so i can't attest to the exact semantic value of concipere as it was used in its earliest stages (and i'm not even going to guess at its proto-indo-european origins), but just looking at the universals of diachronic semantic change, it would be highly atypical for a word to acquire a concrete meaning from a more abstract meaning.

virtually all semantic change involves an extension from the physical to the metaphorical (or metonymic), so i'd have to posit that the metaphysical association would have arisen well after its physical meaning was very well known.

but prolife definitely needs more questions pertaining to historical linguistics. 0:)