have the first idea

present singular third person has the first idea · participle present having the first idea · participle past had the first idea · past had the first idea

1. To have any knowledge (about something); have a clue.

   Do you have the first idea of the worry you've caused me?

   2011, Gregory Dark, Susie and the Snow-it-alls, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   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

   Like you would have the first idea how to get to Newark Airport.

   2013, Lucy Hepburn, 2 Busy 4 Love, →ISBN

   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

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

   1 more example

   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