acceptions

Acceptions is the plural form of acception, a rarely used English noun with historical and scholarly uses. It has two related meanings that overlap with the more common term acceptation. In lexicography and semantics, acception denotes a sense or meaning of a word—essentially, a particular definition or way the word is understood in context. In other contexts, acception can also refer to the act of accepting or receiving something, though this sense is less common today and often replaced by acceptance or receipt.

Because acception is largely obsolete in contemporary English, modern writers typically favor acceptation when referring to a word’s meaning, or simply use terms like sense, meaning, or definition. The plural acceptions may appear when discussing multiple senses of a term or multiple acts of acceptance described within a text.

Etymology traces acception to Latin acceptio, meaning “a taking, reception,” through Old French into English, with Early Modern English use. Over time, the spelling and usage shifted, and acceptation became the more standard form for the sense-related meaning, while acception faded in regular use but persists in historical or philological discussions as a variant.

In contemporary reference works, acceptions is encountered chiefly in discussions of historical linguistics, lexicography, or in quotation from older sources. For readers today, recognizing acceptions as an archaism helps avoid confusion with the more common words acceptance and acceptation.

See also: Acceptation, Sense (linguistics), Meaning, Lexicography.