Idea

Webster's Dictionary of the English Language

·noun A plan or purpose of action; intention; design.

II. Idea ·noun A general notion, or a conception formed by generalization.

III. Idea ·noun A belief, option, or doctrine; a characteristic or controlling principle; as, an essential idea; the idea of development.

IV. Idea ·noun Hence: Any object apprehended, conceived, or thought of, by the mind; a notion, conception, or thought; the real object that is conceived or thought of.

V. Idea ·noun The transcript, image, or picture of a visible object, that is formed by the mind; also, a similar image of any object whatever, whether sensible or spiritual.

VI. Idea ·noun A rational conception; the complete conception of an object when thought of in all its essential elements or constituents; the necessary metaphysical or constituent attributes and relations, when conceived in the abstract.

VII. Idea ·noun A fiction object or picture created by the imagination; the same when proposed as a pattern to be copied, or a standard to be reached; one of the archetypes or patterns of created things, conceived by the Platonists to have excited objectively from eternity in the mind of the Deity.

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