"had the idea that??" In Norwegian we have the idioms "jeg hadde for meg" / "jeg hadde fått for meg" Which means something like "I erroneously thought that" But a lot less formal! I am looking for a matching English idiom. If, for instance, I try to write the sentence "I thought he was bad at drawing, but this portrait is really good." How can I modify the sentence? "I had the idea that he was bad at drawing, but this portrait is really good." ? Or is there another idiom that works better? ETA: I got two good replies below, and reading them made me realise that I chose a poor sample sentence. I think "was under the impression" usually implies that that impression came from somewhere, while what I am looking for is more arbitrary. Maybe "he thought she was ugly, but now he is a supermodel" is a better sample sentence than what I originally wrote.