1,400 new words in our dictionary! — Parasocial, glow-up, promposal & more
1,400 new words in our dictionary! — More

ideate

verb

ˈī-dē-ˌāt How to pronounce ideate (audio)
Definition of ideatenext
as in to imagine
to form a mental picture of the psychotic would repeatedly ideate the act of committing murder, and eventually he came to believe his own delusions

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of ideate The series officially launched at Bantam Books in 1979 with The Cave of Time, a book by Edward Packard, who had ideated a novel branching-story concept while telling bedtime stories to his daughters. — Matt Grobar, Deadline, 21 May 2026 The actress-turned-media-company owner has long had the grit required to ideate, found, and ultimately sell a near-billion-dollar company that flipped Hollywood’s script on its head. — Sydney Lake, Fortune, 17 May 2026 For example, data scientists across the company recently kicked off their own data science community of practice to collectively ideate on use cases. — Rachel Curry, CNBC, 21 Mar. 2026 Computer then ideates subtasks and assigns them to multiple agents as needed, running the models Perplexity deems best for those tasks. — Ashley Belanger, ArsTechnica, 26 Feb. 2026 See All Example Sentences for ideate
Recent Examples of Synonyms for ideate
  1. imagine
  2. envision
  3. conceive
  4. see
  5. visualize
Verb
  • Rather than imagine the ways these characters might have evolved over nearly 30 years, the script by Akiva Goldsman, Georgia Pritchett, and Kelly Marcel regresses the women in order to retread many of the beats of the original film.
    — Angelica Jade Bastién, Vulture, 11 Sep. 2026
  • Ground Zero, 25 years later The World Trade Center site, which took more than a decade to rebuild, has been transformed into something few could have imagined in the days after the attacks.
    — Thomas E. Franklin, USA Today, 11 Sep. 2026
Definition of imagine
Verb
  • Sponsored by Hero Esports, the brainchild of Chinese billionaire Dino Ying, the event was the first of its kind outside China and a blueprint for a global sports league envisioned as Monster Trucks for the Terminator era.
    — Matthew Martin, semafor.com, 14 Sep. 2026
  • All of a sudden, next Sunday’s road game against the Jets (1-0 after a victory at the Tennessee Titans and former New York coach Robert Saleh) feels far more pressure-packed for LaFleur than previously envisioned.
    — Michael Silver, New York Times, 14 Sep. 2026
Definition of envision
Verb
  • Before that day, Americans could not really conceive of an attack like this one — passenger planes slammed into high-rise buildings, the Pentagon, a Pennsylvania field in the deadliest act of coordinated violence this nation has ever seen.
    — Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, The Orlando Sentinel, 11 Sep. 2026
  • Die schöne Müllerin was conceived for a male voice and the protagonist is a young man, so Anderson would not have contemplated performing the complete cycle.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 10 Sep. 2026
Definition of conceive
Verb
  • Emmys nights one and two saw Widow’s Bay pick up a whopping eight trophies, one short of The Studio’s total of nine last year, and this evening might end with Widow’s Bay grabbing a lot of the same awards The Studio did last year.
    — Vulture Staff, Vulture, 15 Sep. 2026
  • The bookshelf becomes a collective record of the times, ways of seeing, forms that flourished during particular eras, and also questions that persist across centuries.
    — Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 15 Sep. 2026
Definition of see
Verb
  • To calculate the number of holes even in large dimensions—when people can no longer visualize these figures—mathematicians use special tricks.
    — Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 15 Sep. 2026
  • The throwing is just a way to visualize it within the virtual space.
    — Jon Martindale, PC Magazine, 14 Sep. 2026
Definition of visualize

Browse Nearby Words

ideas
ideate
ideated
See all Nearby Words

Podcast

Cite this Entry

“Ideate.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ideate. Accessed 18 Sep. 2026.

Copy Citation
Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

More from Merriam-Webster

Word of the Day

Listen to the pronunciation of churlish

See Definitions and Examples »

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

Why do we use apostrophes to show possession?

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

The Exceptions of '-s' and '-es' Plurals

A Who’s Who Regarding ‘Who’s’ and ‘Whose’

'A' or 'an'? What about before 'h'? An Indefinite Article Guide
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

Back to School Vocabulary

Words from the 'Odyssey'

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of

The Words of the Week - Sept. 18
See More

Popular

See More

Why do we use apostrophes to show possession?

9 Words That Sound Like Insults But Aren't

Back to School Vocabulary
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
crayons-in-a-circle
Guess the Color Quiz Questions that use the whole box of crayons.
See All