thinking up
Inventing in mind
Thinking up means inventing or devising something through mental effort: I'm thinking up a name for the band, She thought up an excuse on the spot.
The phrase emphasizes creative generation—you think up ideas, schemes, solutions, or stories.
It suggests the result emerges from deliberate imaginative work rather than memory or discovery.
- making upInventing or reconciling
- cooking upPreparing or scheming
- consideringMentally evaluating something
- developingBecoming more advanced
- pauseTemporary cessation of activity
coming up with · spark · hypothesizing · fantasizing · brainstorming · design · dreaming · originality · ideation · theorizing · wild guess · off the cuff · reasoning · conjuring · ingenuity · conceptualization · envisioning · invention
thinking upremembering
Retaining past information
recalling · recollecting · retrieving · looking up · dredging up
thinking upforgetting
Failing to retain memories
abandoning · discarding · scrapping · rejecting · dismissing
thinking updrawing a blank
Unable to remember
blanking · forgetting · spacing out · zoning out · hitting a wall
think, thinking, thinker, thinks, thought, thoughtful, thoughtfully, unthinking, unthinkingly