Back To The Drawing Board

Top Definitions
Quiz
Examples
Idioms And Phrases

A saying indicating that one's effort has failed, and one must start all over again: "The new package we designed hasn't increased our sales as we'd hoped, so it's back to the drawing board."

QUIZ

ARE YOU A TRUE BLUE CHAMPION OF THESE "BLUE" SYNONYMS?

We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms.

Which of the following words describes "sky blue"?

Write or paste your essay, email, or story into Grammar Coach and get grammar help

Words nearby back to the drawing board

backswordman, back talk, back the wrong horse, back to back, back-to-basics, back to the drawing board, back to the salt mines, back to the wall, backtrack, back-trail, backup

How to use back to the drawing board in a sentence

France 24 is providing live, round-the-clock coverage of both scenes as they progress.
Think back to the Bush-Kerry race of 2004, the Thrilla in Vanilla.
Back in New York, the slow pace and inward focus of her yoga practice was less fulfilling.
Music is a huge part of the tone of Black Dynamite overall—going back to the original 2009 movie on which the series is based.

The al Qaeda-linked gunmen shot back, but only managed to injure one officer before they were taken out.
I waited three months more, in great impatience, then sent him back to the same post, to see if there might be a reply.
Ages back—let musty geologists tell us how long ago—'twas a lake, larger than the Lake of Geneva.
The boys were tumbling about, clinging to his legs, imploring that numerous things be brought back to them.
With a suffocating gasp, she fell back into the chair on which she sat, and covered her face with her hands.
Each day she resolved, "To-morrow I will tell Felipe;" and when to-morrow came, she put it off again.

Other Idioms and Phrases with back to the drawing board

back to the drawing board

Also, back to square one. Back to the beginning because the current attempt was unsuccessful, as in When the town refused to fund our music program, we had to go back to the drawing board, or I've assembled this wrong side up, so it's back to square one. The first term originated during World War II, most likely from the caption of a cartoon by Peter Arno in The New Yorker magazine. It pictured a man who held a set of blueprints and was watching an airplane explode. The variant is thought to come from a board game or street game where an unlucky throw of dice or a marker sends the player back to the beginning of the course. It was popularized by British sports-casters in the 1930s, when the printed radio program included a grid with numbered squares to help listeners follow the description of a soccer game.