“put the idea out of my head” or “pull the idea out of my head”?

Question

I want to know, what expression is more correct:

What I'm trying to say is, "how can I extract the idea from my head and make it a reality?"

The second version is very non-standard. People don't normally even think like that. If you have an idea it's normally accessible to your consciousness, so you just verbalise it. If you can't do that, it's probably not so much an idea as an ill-defined emotional reaction to something.
That's always assuming you're just trying to get the "idea" out of your head as an idea that you might pass on to others, for example. If you mean you have this great idea for, say, a perpetual motion machine, and you want to get it out of your head and convert it to an actual machine in the real world, you might say you want to realise it (fairly rare sense which might well be misunderstood), or actualise, implement, put into practice, etc.

MετάEd · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-16 19:58:08Z

up vote 3 down vote accepted

To "put the idea out of your head" or "out of your mind" means to forget it. So your second expression is closer to what you mean.

answered Jan 16 '12 at 19:58

MετάEd
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Mustafa · Answer 2 · 2012-01-16 19:52:31Z

up vote 3 down vote

You may

put the idea into practice

answered Jan 16 '12 at 19:52

Mustafa
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Yep... is a good option, thanks. – user1121867 Jan 16 '12 at 20:04

2 Answers