Word.ws English Dictionary

back to square one

back to square one adjective: located back at the start, as after a dead end or failure.

back to square one: located back at the start, as after a dead end or failure
Image: Jain Miniature, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

back to square one (not comparable)

  1. (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.
    • 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.1952, Edward Maurice Hugh-Jones, “The American Economy, 1860-1940. by A. J. Youngson Brown”, in The Economic Journal, page 411

Adverb

back to square one (not comparable)

  1. (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.

back to square one meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and Tagalog

back to square one in Hindi

back to the start, as after a dead-end or failure
लौट के बुद्धू घर को आए lauṭ ke buddhū ghar ko āe

back to square one in Tamil

மீண்டும் பழைய நிலைக்கு

back to square one in Bengali

পুনরায় শুরুতে ফিরে আসা, পুনরায় শুরুতে

back to square one in Tagalog

located back at the start, as after a dead-end or failure
balik sa umpisa
More languagesFewer languages
back to square one in Indonesian
kembali ke awal, balik ke awal

Origin of back to square one

Probably from a metaphorical use of the children’s games snakes and ladders.

Questions about back to square one

What does back to square one mean?
Back to square one means located back at the start, as after a dead end or failure.
What is back to square one in Hindi?
Back to square one in Hindi is लौट के बुद्धू घर को आए (lauṭ ke buddhū ghar ko āe). See Back to square one meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is back to square one?
Back to square one can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near back to square one in the dictionary

  1. back to back ticket
  2. back to back tickets
  3. back to basics
  4. back to front
  5. back to nature
  6. back to square one
  7. back to the drawing board
  8. Back to the Future Day
  9. back to the old drawing board
  10. back to the soil
  11. back to the wall

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back to square one (page history and authors); back to square one (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); back to square one (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-back to square one.ogg.

Cite this entry: “back to square one.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back_to_square_one. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.