3. 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.
Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or as the immediate object
of perception, thought, or undersanding, that I call idea.
Locke.
4. A belief, option, or doctrine; a characteristic or controlling
principle; as, an essential idea; the idea of development.
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a
wrong one.
Johnson.
What is now "idea" for us? How infinite the fall of this word,
since the time where Milton sang of the Creator contemplating his
newly-created world, - "how it showed . . . Answering his great
idea," - to its present use, when this person "has an idea that the
train has started," and the other "had no idea that the dinner
would be so bad!"
Trench.