idea — OET · Shobdo

idea

noun

1 the idea of death scares her:

concept, notion, conception, conceptualization, thought, image, mental picture, visualization, abstraction, perception;

hypothesis, postulation.

2 our idea is to open a new shop:

plan, design, scheme, project, proposal, proposition, suggestion, recommendation, aim, intention, objective, object, purpose, end, goal, target.

3 Elizabeth had other ideas on the subject:

thought, theory, view, viewpoint, opinion, feeling, outlook, belief, judgement, conclusion.

4 you had an idea that it might happen?:

sense, feeling, suspicion, fancy, inkling, hunch, understanding, theory, hypothesis, thesis, interpretation, assumption, presumption, supposition, surmise, postulation, conclusion, deduction, inference, notion, impression.

5 the idea of the letter was to get patients to protest:

purpose, point, aim, object, objective, goal, intention, end, end in view, design, reason, use, utility, sense, motive;

value, advantage.

6 could you give me some idea of the cost?:

estimate, estimation, guess, approximation, conjecture, rough calculation, rough idea, surmise;

guesswork;

informal guesstimate;

North American, informal a ballpark figure.

choose the right word

idea, concept, notion

■ Idea has the widest range of these words, with uses dividing roughly into ways of understanding something and plans or intentions. An idea may be a belief or opinion, in particular someone's impression of what something is like (most people form their idea of reality from experience). This often merges into feelings about what something ideally should be (a cookery course wasn't her idea of fun). An idea can also be a thought or suggestion about something that should be done, typically one arrived at as a possible solution to a problem, and this sense extends to that of a plan, hope, or intention (it might be a good idea to get more rest | the idea is to reduce costs).

■ A concept is an understanding of what something is, usually quite a broad subject; it is more fully and consciously worked out than an idea (his theories rest on his concept of consciousness | modern concepts of democracy).

■ Notion may refer either to beliefs about matters of fact or to ideas and wishes about things to do (the notion that public bodies should be representative). A notion is generally vaguer or more tentatively held than an idea, and there may be a suggestion, not present in the other two words, that the beliefs in question are mistaken or absurd (the misguided notion that the policy would remove the problem of homelessness | he rejects any notion of de-skilling).

idea Oxford Dictionary of English