train of thought

Idioms and Phrases

A succession of connected ideas, a path of reasoning, as in You've interrupted my train of thought; now what was I saying? This idiom, which uses train in the sense of “an orderly sequence,” was first recorded in 1651, in philosopher Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan .

Related Words

• acumen
• analysis
• argument
• hypothesis
• inference
• interpretation
• premise
• proposition
• rationale
• thinking