ideate

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Do you march to the beat of a different drummer? Discover 
where this term came from in our Dictionary of Allusions.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?allusion.htm&6
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The Word of the Day for March 16 is:

ideate   \EYE-dee-ayt\   verb
     transitive sense : to form an idea or conception of 
   *intransitive sense : to form an idea

Example sentence: 
     "Drawing on typically far-ranging and hands-on experience, 
designers are prolific in ideating." (Mike Tennity, _Design 
Management Journal_, Summer 2003)

Did you know? 
     Like "idea" and "ideal," "ideate" comes from the Greek 
verb "idein," which means "to see." The sight-thought connection 
came courtesy of Plato, the Greek philosopher who based his 
theory of the ideal on the concept of seeing, claiming that a 
true philosopher can see the essential nature of things and can 
recognize their ideal form or state. Early uses 
of "idea," "ideal," and "ideate" in English were associated with 
Platonic philosophy; "idea" meant "an archetype" or "a standard 
of perfection," "ideal" meant "existing as an archetype," 
and "ideate" referred to forming Platonic ideas. But 
though "ideate" is tied to ancient philosophy, the word itself 
is a modern concoction, relatively speaking. It first appeared 
in English only about 400 years ago. 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.