Word Finder - ideas

definition

An abstract archetype of a given thing, compared to which real-life examples are seen as imperfect approximations; pure essence, as opposed to actual examples.

definition

The conception of someone or something as representing a perfect example; an ideal.

definition

The form or shape of something; a quintessential aspect or characteristic.

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An image of an object that is formed in the mind or recalled by the memory.

example

The mere idea of you is enough to excite me.

definition

More generally, any result of mental activity; a thought, a notion; a way of thinking.

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A conception in the mind of something to be done; a plan for doing something, an intention.

example

I have an idea of how we might escape.

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A purposeful aim or goal; intent

example

Yeah, that's the idea.

definition

A vague or fanciful notion; a feeling or hunch; an impression.

example

He had the wild idea that if he leant forward a little, he might be able to touch the mountain-top.

definition

A musical theme or melodic subject.

I'll talk to my mother and see if she has any ideas.

Of course, I'll start drawing some ideas right away.

Yeah, then along came Katie with her wild ideas about a goat dairy.

Julia had her own ideas about morality, obviously.

A pause, then, "You have such old fashioned ideas sometimes."

They're looking at other ideas.

I got some ideas and I have a few feelers out, Fred answered, a defensive tone in his voice.

I'd guess the only reason they knocked him off was to set an example for anyone else who might have sim­ilar ideas.

You've come up with some crazy ideas in the past, but this time you've gone off the deep end.

This conception of matter, as infinitely divisible and continuous, was taught by Anaxagoras more than four centuries before the Christian era, and in the philosophy of Aristotle the same ideas are found.

They had no abstract ideas; in their minds all was concrete, visible and tangible.

Often, however, her sober ideas are not to be laughed at, for her earnestness carries her listeners with her.

Martha and Betsy chatted constantly over decorating ideas and their new hobby, scouring the area for antiques.

When their destination and ideas didn't match, it was like lighting one.

As someone accustomed to planting ideas in the heads of others, she recognized the thought as coming from someone else.

Jule and I have a few ideas.

But it was only during the last decade of his life that he ventured, with much hesitation, to present his ideas in a systematic and final form.

He was no follower of their ideas, indeed often opposed to them; but he derived from Bacon an increasing stimulus towards the investigation of certain great problems of history and philosophy, while Grotius proved valuable in his study of philosophic jurisprudence.

In the second he not only enlarges his matter and gives multiplied applications of his ideas, but also follows the synthetic method, first expounding the laws he had discovered and then proving them by the facts to which they are applied.

Though her husband was a patron of Rousseau, she herself had narrowly escaped the guillotine, and had only half imbibed the ideas of the Revolution.

Don't you think he might get ideas?

You have the strangest ideas.

To the former he owes his appreciation of exact investigation and a complete knowledge of the aims of science, to the latter an equal admiration for the great circle of ideas which had been diffused by the teaching of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

Thus defined, idealism is opposed to ordinary common-sense dualism, which regards knowledge or experience as the result of the more or less accidental relation between two separate and independent entities - the mind and its ideas on one side, the thing with its attributes on the other - that serve to limit and condition each other from without.

Now all of a sudden, ideas were persistent.

Even when she did not fully understand words or ideas, she liked to set them down as though she did.

In any case, Alex might not be happy with her old-fashioned ideas.

Don't you know people talk about a woman who spends weeks out here with men - and men start to get ideas.

As far as work quarters go, I have a ton of ideas.

Two clear and distinct ideas, it seems, produce an absolute mystery.

And innate ideas therefore are mere capacities or tendencies, - possibilities which apart from the will to think may be regarded as nothing at all.

Pascal and other members of Port Royal openly expressed their doubts about the place allowed to God in the system; the adherents of Gassendi met it by resuscitating atoms; and the Aristotelians maintained their substantial forms as of old; the Jesuits argued against the arguments for the being of God, and against the theory of innate ideas; whilst Pierre Daniel Huet (1630-1721), bishop of Avranches, once a Cartesian himself, made a vigorous onslaught on the contempt in which his former comrades held literature and history, and enlarged on the vanity of all human aspirations after rational truth.

A Latin abridgment of philosophy, dated 1784, tells us that the innate ideas of Descartes are founded on no arguments, and are now universally abandoned.

The ghost of innate ideas seems to be all that it had left.

He was also well known as a sanitary reformer, and during the last ten years of his life he did much useful work in inculcating more enlightened ideas on the subject both in Edinburgh and other places.

The whole apparatus of "forensic" ideas (law, punishment, satisfaction, &c.) is summarily rejected as foreign to God's purpose of love.

Macedon to the headship of the Greek states, and the air was charged with great ideas.

Of those, again, who maintain the traditional view, some, like Niebuhr and Grote, regard it as convicting Alexander of mad ambition and vainglory, whilst to Kaerst Alexander only incorporates ideas which were the timely fruit of a long historical development.

He speaks as a legislator, citing no authority; but he formulates, doubtless, the ideas and perhaps the practices of the Jerusalem priesthood.

As has been said of another thinker, he was " one of those deeply religious men who, when crude theological notions are being revised and called in question seek to put new life into theology by wider and more humane ideas."

As a classical scholar, his scorn of littlenesses sometimes led him into the neglect of minutiae, but he had the higher merit of interpreting ideas.

They did not get their ideas of church polity from one another, but drew it directly from the New Testament.

During the three years of his banishment Calvin was at Strassburg, where he had been carrying out his ideas.

Presbyterian principles and ideas were entertained by many of the leading ecclesiastics in England during the reign of Edward VI.

Such business as did not profane the Sabbath according to Babylonian ideas cannot be quoted against their observance of their Sabbath.

Perhaps his energy would not have been sufficient to sustain him against these repeated blows of destiny if, in 1854, the accession to the viceroyalty of Egypt of his old friend, Said Pacha, had not given a new impulse to the ideas that had haunted him for the last twenty-two years concerning the Suez Canal.

They broke down the intense narrowness of the life of those feudal times, enlarged men's conceptions and introduced new ideas into their minds.

Advance in his religious ideas led him to seek the freer atmosphere of Strassburg in the autumn of 1529.

In the interpretation of these signs the two chief factors were association of ideas and association of words.

He was the real founder of the Romantic school; to him more than to any other member of the school we owe the revolutionizing and germinating ideas which influenced so profoundly the development of German literature at the beginning of the 19th century.