IdiomBody & Senses
English
Englishgo back to the drawing board
Meaning: Return to the planning stage of a project.
Example: “The prototype fell apart in testing, so it's back to the drawing board.”
Equivalents in other languages
French: Revoir sa copie Literally: To revise one's paper
Origin: A drawing board is where engineers and architects draft designs. The phrase was popularized by a 1941 cartoon by Peter Arno in The New Yorker, in which an engineer walks away from a crashed plane saying, "Well, back to the old drawing board."
More English idioms
- a bone to pick A dispute.
- burn one's bridges To take a course of action that makes it impossible to go back.
- by word of mouth The informal, verbal passing of information from one person to another.
- catch someone's eye To attract someone's visual attention.
- change of heart A reversal of attitude.
- cold feet Too scared to do something.
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