Word.ws English Dictionary

-ception

-ception suffix: neural reception.

Suffix (1)

-ception

  1. Neural reception.

Suffix (2)

-ception

  1. (slang) Combined with a noun to indicate a layering, nesting, or recursion of the referent.
    • 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.2012 September 10, Timothy Morrise, “Reviewer previews his top picks for fall movie season”, in University Journal, archived from the original on 25 Jan 2025, page 6
    • Playception: Each actor must portray a character playing another character.2012, Maura Breen, "Latest play presents challenge for actors", Tan & Cardinal (Otterbein University), Volume 94, Issue 5, 26 September 2012, page 4 (image caption)

Origin of -ception

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.

Questions about -ception

What does -ception mean?
-ception means neural reception.
What part of speech is -ception?
-ception is a suffix.

Words near -ception in the dictionary

  1. -centric
  2. -centrism
  3. -cephalic
  4. -cephalous
  5. -cephaly
  6. -ception
  7. -ceptor
  8. -cercous
  9. -ces
  10. -cest
  11. -cester

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -ception (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “-ception.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ception. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.