A Clue A Clue Phrase

I haven't got a clue

What's the meaning of the phrase 'I haven't got a clue'?

Without whatsoever knowledge or understanding.

What's the origin of the phrase 'I oasis't got a inkling'?

This little phrase, which is often given as 'I don't have a inkling', doesn't at starting time sight announced to be idiomatic at all and hardly deserving of investigation. Subsequently all, a clue is an insight or thought that points us towards a solution. To be without a inkling is simply to be ignorant. Notwithstanding, a inkling (as well spelled clew) previously had a different pregnant - a globular ball formed from coiling worms or the like or, more specifically, a ball of thread. Clew has been used with that meaning for at least a thou years and citations of it in Old English date back to 897AD, when no less an author than Aelfred, King of Wessex used it in his West-Saxon translation of Gregory'due south Pastoral Intendance. Shakespeare also used the discussion with the 'thread' meaning, for example, in All's Well that Ends Well, 1602:

"If information technology exist so, you have wound a goodly clewe."

That seems a long way from crossword clues or Sherlock Holmes' stories. How did we become from a brawl of thread to the electric current significant of clue?

Have a clue Go back to Greek myth and retrieve the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus entered the labyrinth to kill the half-man, half-bull Minotaur. He did so but was only able to discover his way out by retracing his path, marked past the cord given to him by Ariadne. So, Theseus 'had a clew' about the safe route out of the maze and was able to escape.

Geoffrey Chaucer recorded this story in The Legend of Ariadne, Part VI of The Legend of Good Women, 1385:

Therto have I a remedie in my thoght,
By a clewe of twyn as he hath gon,
The aforementioned weye he may returne a-non,
ffolwynge alwey the thred as he hath come.

Then, don't exist clueless - all you need is some cord.