Dictionary

back to the drawing board en · ADV

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Etymology

Coined as “Well, back to the old drawing board,” as the caption of a cartoon by Peter Arno of The New Yorker on March 1, 1941, depicting a delighted engineer walking away from a crashed plane.

Meanings

1. (idiomatic) Indicates that one must try a different strategy in order to achieve some goal following the failure of a recent attempt.
   • If we head for lay up tomorrow, those plans are right down the toilet and it's back to the drawing board. 1999, Mark L. Thompson, “Monday, October 28: Lake Michigan, Upbound”, in A Sailor’s Logbook: A Season Aboard Great Lakes Freighters (Great Lakes Books), Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, →ISBN, page 282:
   • Poverty is created by institutions, concepts, and policies. We need to go back to the drawing board to redesign these and remove the barriers. 1999, Muhammad Yunus, “Opinion: Must There be Poverty?”, in Carolyn Dedolph, editor, Rice: Hunger or Hope?: IRRI 1998–1999, Makati City, Philippines: International Rice Research Institute, →ISBN, page 2:
   • “It’s become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can’t function as we wanted. So we’re ending the council and going back to the drawing board,” a Google spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement on Thursday. 2019 April 5, Sam Levin, “Google scraps AI ethics council after backlash: ‘Back to the drawing board’”, in The Guardian:
   • Big business wants the main parties to go back to the drawing board on climate policy after the election to try to come up with an agreed plan for an economically efficient way to reduce Australia's emissions and offer investment certainty. 2013 August 19, Lenore Taylor, “Go back to the drawing board on climate policy, business tells politicians”, in The Guardian:
   • For such cases the only thing is to go back to the drawing board and do it better; and it is here that the highest qualities of vision and human leadership are needed. 1958, The Engineer, volume 205, page 920:
   • Well, that didn't work at all, so it's back to the drawing board, I guess.

Forms

Relateds

back to square one · square one

Translations (9)

pl od nowa (back to the beginning) · nl terug bij af (back to the beginning) · id balik ke awal (back to the beginning) · pl od początku (back to the beginning) · id kembali ke awal (back to the beginning) · pt de volta à prancheta de desenho (back to the beginning) · ru нача́ть с нуля́ (back to the beginning) · sv tillbaka till ritbordet (back to the beginning) · pl od zera (back to the beginning)