"have a clue" meaning in English

See have a clue in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: has a clue [present, singular, third-person], having a clue [participle, present], had a clue [participle, past], had a clue [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|have<has,,had> a clue}} have a clue (third-person singular simple present has a clue, present participle having a clue, simple past and past participle had a clue)
  1. (colloquial) To be knowledgeable about a topic or situation. Tags: colloquial Related terms: clueful, clueless

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for have a clue meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "has a clue",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "having a clue",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had a clue",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had a clue",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "have<has,,had> a clue"
      },
      "expansion": "have a clue (third-person singular simple present has a clue, present participle having a clue, simple past and past participle had a clue)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English negative polarity items",
          "parents": [
            "Negative polarity items",
            "Terms by semantic function"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "December 2 2020, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 68",
          "text": "I haven't booked, so I don't have a clue as to whether the service will be busy or not. Supposedly, reservations are compulsory, but I want to find out what would happen if you just turn up.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be knowledgeable about a topic or situation."
      ],
      "id": "en-have_a_clue-en-verb-kmfRtowq",
      "links": [
        [
          "knowledgeable",
          "knowledgeable"
        ],
        [
          "topic",
          "topic"
        ],
        [
          "situation",
          "situation"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) To be knowledgeable about a topic or situation."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "clueful"
        },
        {
          "word": "clueless"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "have a clue"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "has a clue",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "having a clue",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had a clue",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "had a clue",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "have<has,,had> a clue"
      },
      "expansion": "have a clue (third-person singular simple present has a clue, present participle having a clue, simple past and past participle had a clue)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "clueful"
    },
    {
      "word": "clueless"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English negative polarity items",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "December 2 2020, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 68",
          "text": "I haven't booked, so I don't have a clue as to whether the service will be busy or not. Supposedly, reservations are compulsory, but I want to find out what would happen if you just turn up.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be knowledgeable about a topic or situation."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "knowledgeable",
          "knowledgeable"
        ],
        [
          "topic",
          "topic"
        ],
        [
          "situation",
          "situation"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) To be knowledgeable about a topic or situation."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "have a clue"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-03-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-03-01 using wiktextract (68773ab and 5f6ddbb). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.