back to square one
English
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Etymology
[edit]Probably from a metaphorical use of the children’s games snakes and ladders.[1][2]
Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Adjective
[edit]back to square one (not comparable)
- (idiomatic) Located back at the start, as after a dead end or failure.
- After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we are back to square one.
- 1952, Edward Maurice Hugh-Jones, “The American Economy, 1860-1940. by A. J. Youngson Brown”, in The Economic Journal, page 411:
- Withal he has the problem of maintaining the interest of the reader who is always being sent back to square one in a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders.
Translations
[edit]located back at the start, as after a dead-end or failure
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Adverb
[edit]back to square one (not comparable)
- (idiomatic) Back to the start, as after a dead end or failure.
- After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we went back to square one.
Translations
[edit]back to the start, as after a dead-end or failure
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See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ “Extract revised for OED Online: square one”, in Oxford English Dictionary[1], 2006 January, archived from the original on 16 March 2006.
- ^ Gary Martin (1997–) “Back to square one”, in The Phrase Finder, retrieved 26 February 2017.
Further reading
[edit]
back to square one (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
