Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A sudden clever plan or idea.
- n. A sudden, violent disturbance of the mind.
- v. To engage in or organize brainstorming.
- v. To consider or investigate (an issue, for example) by brainstorming.
- v. To think of or produce (a solution to a problem, for example) by brainstorming.
Wiktionary
- n. A sudden thought, particularly one that solves a long-standing problem.
- n. brainstorming
- n. An unexpected mental error.
- v. To investigate something, or solve a problem using brainstorming.
- v. To participate in a brainstorming session.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. the clear (and often sudden) understanding of a complex situation; a sudden brilliant insight.
- v. to try to solve a problem by discussing it exhaustively in an intense group meeting encouraging uninhibited and spontaneous contributions from all members.
WordNet 3.0
- v. try to solve a problem by thinking intensely about it
- n. the clear (and often sudden) understanding of a complex situation
Examples
“You must brainstorm from the beginning of a project – before you even write a word of it – through the outlining, the writing, and the final edit and polish.”
NaNoWriMo Workshop – Find, and Flush Out, an Idea « Write Anything
“The brainstorm is this: one could very easily use Meetup to arrange a local “Old School CD Share.””
“If I weren't set up for that and were looking for outside hosting, I'd probably go for something like Meilin Miranda's latest brainstorm, which is a co-hosting site for authors doing crowdsourced fiction: DigitalNovelists. com.”
“What you come up with in a brainstorm is a seed of an idea that needs to be cultivated to grow.”
“I wanted to brainstorm with you, however, the closest you'll ever come to a brainstorm is a light drizzle.”
“What we need in order to brainstorm is to jolt the system, force the brain to think in patterns and perceptions that it has no experience or former guidelines to use.”
“Just give me a call whenever you want to have a "brainstorm" session about space commercialization.”
“His comments came a day after he participated in a meeting at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington to "brainstorm" solutions to the oil spill.”
“He was certainly in the grip of some kind of brainstorm on that last night in the engine-house.”
“It took 7 minutes to write w/out "brainstorm" concepting beforehand. so it was just a freewrite.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘brainstorm’.
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Words that are also movies
Unabashedly stolen from a comment made by courier12.
vertigo, serendipity, casablanca, psycho, jaws, fantasia, stagecoach, network, rocky, giant, platoon, unforgiven and 285 more...
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Public List: Body Metaphors
Phrases that use body parts metaphorically.
neck of the woods, bone of contention, mouth of a river, teeth of the storm, heart of the matter, foot of the bed, eye of the storm, dogleg hole, finger lakes, headwaters, foothills, knik arm and 212 more...
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Waves and Waveforms
wave, brainwave, soliton, traveling wave, tidal wave, transverse wave, capillary wave, cats' paws, alpha wave, light wave, microwave, acoustic wave and 293 more...
bilby "In the following over, Australia were 119-4 as Michael Clarke suffered a brainstorm facing Harbhajan, electing to play no shot to a standard off-break to go leg before wicket."
- 'Symonds leads Australia recovery', BBC website, 2 Jan 2008.
If you can decipher the cricket jargon, this is a usage of brainstorm in its (contronymic) second and rarer sense, ie. to have a violent, sudden disturbance of the mind.
Jan 2, 2008