conjure up

English

Verb

conjure up (third-person singular simple present conjures up, present participle conjuring up, simple past and past participle conjured up)

1. (transitive) To create or produce something, seemingly magically.
2. (transitive) To call up or command a spirit or devil by an incantation.
3. (transitive) To generate (an image or an idea) in one's mind.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 252:

     Like most persons utterly unused to deception, she could not imagine how it was to be managed; and her thoughts conjured up every probable and improbable embarrassment that might occur.

   • 2012 March-April, Jan Sapp, “Race Finished”, in American Scientist‎^[1], volume 100, number 2, page 164:

     Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?

   • 2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC‎^[2]:

     For his part, he told the New York Times in 2019 that he didn’t feel he could conjure up the requisite malevolence to play certain roles.

Translations

To create or produce something, seemingly magically.

• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: trylle frem

To generate (an image or an idea) in one's mind.

• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: lokke frem, mane frem

See also

• magic up