Dictionary

have the first idea en · VERB

Meanings

1. (in the negative) To have any knowledge (about something); have a clue.
   • I think if you had the first idea how shitty this looks to me, you'd never have done it in the first place.” 2014, Tamar Cohen, The Broken, →ISBN, page 128:
   • We were meant to get a replacement teacher but we usually just get the occasional Part-Timer or maybe a P.E. teacher whose football has been rained off – neither of whom have the first idea about what they're supposed to be teaching us. 2011, Tom Clempson, One Seriously Messed-Up Week, →ISBN:
   • Do you have the first idea of the worry you've caused me? 2011, Gregory Dark, Susie and the Snow-it-alls, →ISBN:
   • Like you would have the first idea how to get to Newark Airport. 2013, Lucy Hepburn, 2 Busy 4 Love, →ISBN:
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see have, first, idea.
   • The best instruments known are also due to the genius of Newton; it was he who had the first idea of adapting mirrors to those which serve to measure these distances. 1817, The Edinburgh Observer: Or, Town and Country Magazine:
   • I knew that Nabokov had had the first idea for the novel almost four years before his death and that when he still had more than fourteen months to live Véra had reported that he was “about half way” to completion. 2011, Brian Boyd, Stalking Nabokov, →ISBN, page 387:

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