blank canvas
blank canvas noun: an unmarked or empty state, offering a limitless potential for creation, development or interpretation.
Noun
blank canvas (plural blank canvases or blank canvasses)
- An unmarked or empty state, offering a limitless potential for creation, development or interpretation.
- Near-synonyms: new canvas, clean slate, new page, new sheet, new leaf
- After his ex-wife moved out, his life was a blank canvas.
- Synonyms:
- blank slate, empty canvas, empty page, blank page, empty sheet, blank sheet, empty leaf, blank leaf, new canvas, clean slate
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blank, canvas.
- There are no such personal revelations in The Madonna of the Future, nor anything, indeed, at all characteristic of Mr James. There is beauty in the tale of the American painter who dreams over a model for twenty years, while he and she grow old, and leaves at his death nothing more to show for his...1916, Rebecca West, Henry James
- From a practical point of view, it has been easier to apply this model to Spain's high-speed system - effectively a blank canvas - than it would be to Britain's deeply interwoven and congested classic network.2023 July 26, Ben Jones, “EU open access growth offers pointers for UK hopefuls”, in RAIL, number 988, page 33
Examples of blank canvas in a sentence
- Her gaze was wide while she was wondering; then her lids drooped low, and lower, as on the blank canvas of her mental view there grew laboriously a conception.1903, Leonard Merrick, The Quaint Companions:
- But when we're truly engaged with the blank canvas of our lives, moment to moment, a timeless quality emerges.2014, Panache Desai, Discovering Your Soul Signature, Hachette, →ISBN:
Synonyms of blank canvas
Forms of blank canvas
| plural | blank canvases |
|---|---|
| plural | blank canvasses |
Origin of blank canvas
By analogy with artists who begin with a blank canvas, thereby possessing the freedom to shape it according to their creative inclinations.
Questions about blank canvas
- What does blank canvas mean?
- Blank canvas means an unmarked or empty state, offering a limitless potential for creation, development or interpretation.
- How do you use blank canvas in a sentence?
- Her gaze was wide while she was wondering; then her lids drooped low, and lower, as on the blank canvas of her mental view there grew laboriously a conception.
- What part of speech is blank canvas?
- Blank canvas is a noun.
- What is the plural of blank canvas?
- The plural of blank canvas is blank canvases.
Words near blank canvas in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blank canvas (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-blank canvas.ogg.
Cite this entry: “blank canvas.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blank_canvas. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.