start from scratch
Meaning: To begin again from nothing.
Language: English
Literally: (Already vivid in English)
Example: “The fire destroyed the workshop, so he had to start from scratch.”
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Traces to 18th-century sporting contests — foot racing, boxing, and later cricket and golf — where "scratch" named a line literally scratched into the ground marking the starting point for competitors with no handicap advantage. In handicap races, weaker or less experienced competitors were given a head start ahead of the scratch line, while the strongest entrants had to begin exactly at it, starting truly level with no advantage carried over from anywhere else. A documented 1853 handicap running event in Sheffield, reported in the sporting newspaper The Era, shows the term already well established in this literal athletic sense. "Starting from scratch" broadened naturally from that literal starting line into the now-general sense of beginning any project or effort with absolutely nothing carried over from before — no existing materials, progress, or advantage of any kind.
More idioms — Daily Life
- step on it — To hurry.
- stew in one's own juices — To suffer the consequences of one's own actions.
- stick to one's guns — To be firm in one's resolve or not to alter one's position.
- straight and narrow — The path of correct social or ethical behavior that society approves of.
- strapped for cash — Not having quite enough money.
- street smarts — The knowledge one needs to live on the streets; less literally, it means knowledge of the…
More English idioms
- strange bedfellows — People or things that one does not normally expect to find together.
- stretch the truth — To be truthful technically, but to distort the truth so that others are led to believe so…
- strike it rich — To become rich or successful suddenly.
- string someone along — To make someone believe something that is not true.
- stuffed shirt — A pompous, self-important and humorless person.
- suit someone to a T — Perfectly; exactly.