Noun

(en noun)

(literally)   The arrangement of support beams that represent a building's general shape and size.

(figuratively)   The larger branches of a tree that determine its shape.

(figuratively, especially in, computing)   A basic conceptual structure.

* {{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April

, author=John T. Jost , title=Social Justice: Is It in Our Nature (and Our Future)? , volume=100, issue=2, page=162 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=He draws eclectically on studies of baboons, descriptive anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies and, in a few cases, the fossil record. With this biological framework in place, Corning endeavors to show that the capitalist system as currently practiced in the United States and elsewhere is manifestly unfair.}}

These ‘three principles of connexion’ comprise the framework of principles in Hume's account of the association of ideas.

(literally)   The identification and categorisation of processes or steps that constitute a complex task or mindset in order to render explicit the tacit and implicit.

Noun

(en noun)

A strand of yarn etc. as used to guide one through a labyrinth; something which points the way, a guide.

* 1897 , Henry James, What Maisie Knew :

she had even had in the past a small smug conviction that in the domestic labyrinth she always kept the clue .

Information which may lead one to a certain point or conclusion.

An object or a kind of indication which may be used as evidence.

(slang) Insight or understanding ("to have a clue [about]" or "to have clue". See have a clue, clue stick)