Adjacent Words

brainstorm definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the clear (and often sudden) understanding of a complex situation [syn: insight, brainstorm, brainwave] v
1: try to solve a problem by thinking intensely about it

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: circa 1894 1. a violent transient fit of insanity 2. a. a sudden bright idea b. a harebrained idea

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a violent or excited outburst often as a result of a sudden mental disturbance. 2 colloq. mental confusion. 3 US a brainwave. 4 a concerted intellectual treatment of a problem by discussing spontaneous ideas about it. Derivatives: brainstorming n. (in sense 4).

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(brainstorms, brainstorming, brainstormed) 1. If you have a brainstorm, you suddenly become unable to think clearly. (BRIT) I can have a brainstorm and be very extravagant. N-COUNT 2. If you have a brainstorm, you suddenly have a clever idea. (AM; in BRIT, usually use brainwave) 'Look,' she said, getting a brainstorm, 'Why don't you invite them here?' = brainwave N-COUNT 3. If a group of people brainstorm, they have a meeting in which they all put forward as many ideas and suggestions as they can think of. The women meet twice a month to brainstorm and set business goals for each other... We can brainstorm a list of the most influential individuals in the company. VERB: V, V n • brainstorming Hundreds of ideas had been tried and discarded during two years of brainstorming.

Moby Thesaurus

absurd idea, afebrile delirium, automatic response, blind impulse, boutade, brain wave, brainchild, bright idea, bright thought, brilliant idea, capriccio, caprice, conceit, crank, craze, crazy idea, crotchet, deliriousness, delirium, drive, fad, fancy, fantastic notion, fantasy, flash, fleeting impulse, flimflam, fool notion, freak, freakish inspiration, good idea, gut response, harebrained idea, humor, impulse, incoherence, inspiration, instinct, involuntary impulse, kink, lingual delirium, maggot, megrim, natural impulse, notion, passing fancy, quick hunch, quirk, ranting, raving, reflex, sudden thought, toy, urge, vagary, wandering, whim, whim-wham, whimsy