Meaning of thinking cap | Babel Free

Definitions

A metaphorical state of focused thinking or concentration, invoked to encourage problem-solving.

humorous, idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“This project looks like it will be a real challenge – put on your thinking cap!”

“Now suppose they put on their "thinking-caps" a moment or two, and consider what is going on in the great world around them. [...] Before you pull off your "thinking-cap" cast a look around your own country—free, prosperous, powerful, independent; yet how full of wickedness, and how unmindful of its obligation to the God of nations!”

“Come children, gather around the desk, and we will have a chat for half an hour. We want you to put on your thinking caps, and show what manner of boys and girls you are.”

“The story you shall have, then, just as well as I can tell it: and you must put on your thinking-caps, so as to remember all you can of it; and be sure to ask questions about what you don't understand.”

“"Costly gifts, my dear child, are not always acceptable as a proof of love. And if you put on your thinking cap, perhaps you will find that you, too, can take an acceptable keepsake to your teacher." / "Why, I'm sure I've nothing worth taking to her, mamma. And all the thinking caps in the world can't help me to an idea."”

“As time passed the Great Spirit grew fonder and fonder of his good-natured friend, and was grieved to see him suffer for the lack of a full dinner pot and stomach, so the Great Spirit put on his thinking-cap and learned a way to help Mr. Turtle. "The old fellow needs a wife!" said the Great Spirit taking off his thinking-cap.”

“There are two of us with children and just think now, if two of us with children can do this, just think what the young people who don't have children, coming out of school, can do if they put their thinking caps on and just volunteered and sat down and talked to find out what they can do. I know there are a lot of them out there can do it.”

“So Reuben [Mattus] put on his thinking cap and came up with the name Häagen-Dazs for his new line of premium, high-fat ice cream. Although it sports an umlaut and sounds Scandinavian, the name Häagen-Dazs is pure nonsense—it doesn't actually mean anything in any known language.”

“[I]f he stopped, took a deep breath, and put on a thinking cap to make a plan, he would have a greater chance of finding the object and finding it sooner.”

CEFR level