-ception
suffix, slang ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Neural reception. morpheme
- 2 Combined with a noun to indicate a layering, nesting, or recursion of the referent. morpheme, slang
"Adapted from David Mitchell's novel of the same name, Cloud Atlas is a story-ception; a post apocalyptic campfire story about a guy watching a movie in which someone reads a novel whose main character follows a series of letters."
Example
More examples"Adapted from David Mitchell's novel of the same name, Cloud Atlas is a story-ception; a post apocalyptic campfire story about a guy watching a movie in which someone reads a novel whose main character follows a series of letters."
Etymology
Back-formed from words such as nociception and proprioception.
Rebracketing of inception coined with reference to the 2010 science fiction film of the same title, the plot of which involves a team of people infiltrating someone's subconscious mind, proceeding through several layers of dreams in the process.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.