Word.ws English Dictionary

go back to the drawing board

go back to the drawing board verb: to start again; to scrap a previous idea or plan and try again from the beginning.

Verb

go back to the drawing board (third-person singular simple present goes back to the drawing board, present participle going back to the drawing board, simple past went back to the drawing board, past participle gone back to the drawing board)

  1. (idiomatic) To start again; to scrap a previous idea or plan and try again from the beginning.
    • After the original plan failed miserably, they decided to go back to the drawing board and come up with something new.

Forms of go back to the drawing board

third-person singular presentgoes back to the drawing board
present participlegoing back to the drawing board
pastwent back to the drawing board
past participlegone back to the drawing board

Questions about go back to the drawing board

What does go back to the drawing board mean?
Go back to the drawing board means to start again; to scrap a previous idea or plan and try again from the beginning.
What part of speech is go back to the drawing board?
Go back to the drawing board is a verb.
What is the past tense of go back to the drawing board?
The past tense of go back to the drawing board is went back to the drawing board.

Words near go back to the drawing board in the dictionary

  1. go back a long way
  2. go back in time
  3. go back on
  4. go back on one's word
  5. go back to
  6. go back to the drawing board
  7. go back to the tools
  8. go back to where you came from
  9. go back to your country
  10. go backwards
  11. go bad

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go back to the drawing board (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-go back to the drawing board.ogg.

Cite this entry: “go back to the drawing board.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_back_to_the_drawing_board. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.