Idea

How to spell idea

4 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce idea

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does idea mean?

1. nounA thought, plan, or mental conception formed in the mind.

Idea in a sentence

• She pitched a clever idea for cutting the team's monthly costs.

• The best idea often arrives while you are away from your desk.

Where does idea come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word descends from the Greek 'idea', which literally meant the 'look', 'form' or 'appearance' of a thing, and was built on the verb 'idein', meaning 'to see'. For the philosopher Plato the word carried a far loftier sense: an 'idea' was an eternal, perfect form or pattern of which everything in the visible world is only a copy, so the term began life tied to the act of seeing and then moved into the realm of pure thought. Latin took the word over directly as 'idea', keeping both the philosophical sense and the looser meaning of a mental image or notion. English adopted it in the late 1500s, and by the 1600s it had settled into its everyday meaning of a thought, plan or conception formed in the mind. Because the spelling preserves the original Greek vowels rather than English phonetics, the word ends in the easily fumbled run of 'idea' rather than the 'idear' some speakers say aloud, and that mismatch between sound and spelling is its only real trap.

How the word is built

• idea (from Greek idea: form, pattern, notion); no affixes in the modern English form