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This paper discusses the different meanings of the word component in various contexts of software engineering. To overcome this ambiguity we propose to distinguish between two fundamental meanings of the term which should be emphasized by using different names.

Patterns help transporting knowledge and provide common names for solutions. Architects need a lot of experience to create long-lasting system architectures and should benefit from experiences written down in patterns.The description of architecture patterns and design patterns usually focuses on structures in software. This renders the patterns of limited use for architects who need to structure a system before they choose a structure for the implementing software. Therefore, architects need an additional kind of patterns with an adequate notation.This paper introduces the category of conceptual patterns which focus on system structure in the description of problem and solution. Architects can benefit from the solutions described by conceptual patterns when analyzing systems and in early phases of system design.Extracting the conceptual part of existing patterns is a first step to find conceptual patterns. Usually, a set of patterns will be arranged in a pattern language for a problem domain. This paper shows some examples of conceptual patterns extracted from existing architecture and design patterns.