train of thought

Idioms  

1. 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.

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Example Sentences

But you can follow their train of thought.

From Literature

I swear I had another example, but I lost my train of thought.

From The Wall Street Journal

As I come back—I had a ruler!—Dad interrupts my train of thought.

From Literature

Some mornings there might be three or four messages; other times, Chloé might have got carried away and recorded 12 or 13 trains of thought.

From Los Angeles Times

“On Amazon, it’s literally, you get two bottles, well, it comes in two,” Kory started to explain, before stopping that train of thought.

From Salon

Related Words

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