Word.ws English Dictionary

draw blank

draw blank verb: to search (something) without finding what one was looking for.

Verb

draw blank (third-person singular simple present draws blank, present participle drawing blank, simple past drew blank, past participle drawn blank)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To search (something) without finding what one was looking for.
    • ‘Last time we were here we drew the whole place blank, and old D. cursed the keeper's head off and accused him of poisoning the foxes, so I suppose he did it to get a bit of his own back!’1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 24

Forms of draw blank

third-person singular presentdraws blank
present participledrawing blank
pastdrew blank
past participledrawn blank

Questions about draw blank

What does draw blank mean?
Draw blank means to search (something) without finding what one was looking for.
What part of speech is draw blank?
Draw blank is a verb.
What is the past tense of draw blank?
The past tense of draw blank is drew blank.

Words near draw blank in the dictionary

  1. draw ahead
  2. draw and quarter
  3. draw attention
  4. draw away
  5. draw back
  6. draw blank
  7. draw blood
  8. draw breath
  9. draw bridge
  10. draw bridges
  11. draw bridle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: draw blank (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.

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