conceit

conceit in literature, fanciful or unusual image in which apparently dissimilar things are shown to have a relationship. The Elizabethan poets were fond of Petrarchan conceits, which were conventional comparisons, imitated from the love songs of Petrarch, in which the beloved was compared to a flower, a garden, or the like. The device was also used by the metaphysical poets , who fashioned conceits that were witty, complex, intellectual, and often startling, e.g., John Donne's comparison of two souls with two bullets in "The Dissolution." Samuel Johnson disapproved of such strained metaphors, declaring that in the conceit "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together." Such modern poets as Emily Dickinson and T. S. Eliot have used conceits.

conceit. Agreeable fabrique in a garden, usually whimsical, such as a bridge not spanning anything but there purely for ornament.

conceit †conception, thought; personal opinion XIV; fanciful opinion, etc., fancy XV; for self-conceit XVII. f. CONCEIVE on the analogy of the pairs deceive, deceit, receive, receipt, which have French originals. The sense-development was infl. by It. concetto (cf. CONCEPT), which the Eng. word was prob. designed to represent.
Hence conceit vb. XVI. conceited XVI. f. vb. or sb.; see -ED 2.