Word.ws English Dictionary

going back to the drawing board

going back to the drawing board is the present participle and gerund of go back to the drawing board.

Meaning of go back to the drawing board

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.

Questions about going back to the drawing board

What is going back to the drawing board the present participle and gerund of?
Going back to the drawing board is the present participle and gerund of go back to the drawing board.

Words near going back to the drawing board in the dictionary

  1. going back
  2. going back a long way
  3. going back in time
  4. going back on
  5. going back to
  6. going back to the drawing board
  7. going back to the tools
  8. going backwards
  9. going bad
  10. going ballistic
  11. going balls up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going back to the drawing board (page history and authors); 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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