Word.ws English Dictionary

tabula rasa

/ˈtæbjʊlə ˈɹɑːzə/

tabula rasa noun: a mind, as of a newborn, free of any impressions, notions, ideas, etc.

Noun

tabula rasa (plural tabulae rasae or tabulæ rasæ)

  1. A mind, as of a newborn, free of any impressions, notions, ideas, etc.
    • Near-synonym: clean slate
    • We all admit now that the Child does not come into the world with a mental tabula rasa of entire forgetfulness but on the contrary as the possessor of vast stores of sub-conscious memory, derived from its ancestral inheritances; we all admit that a certain grace and intuitive insight and even...1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 173
  2. Anything which exists in a pristine state.
    • Near-synonyms: clean slate, blank slate
    • In his quest for rehabilitation, Connally is counting on the newspapers' behaving as they normally do: becoming tabulae rasae every 24 hours.1975 October 27, Aaron Latham, “John Connally on the Comeback Road”, in New York, volume 8, number 43, pages 47–48

tabula rasa meaning in Tamil, Arabic and Indonesian

tabula rasa in Tamil

எழுதாப் பலகை

tabula rasa in Arabic

the idea that the mind comes into the world as a blank state
صَفْحَة بَيْضَاء

tabula rasa in Indonesian

the idea that the mind comes into the world as a blank state
tabula rasa

Synonyms of tabula rasa

Forms of tabula rasa

pluraltabulae rasae
pluraltabulæ rasæ

Origin of tabula rasa

Unadapted borrowing from Latin tabula rāsa (literally “erased tablet”), where the collocation comprised tabula (“wax-covered writing tablet”, noun) + rāsa, feminine singular of rāsus (“scraped, erased, cleaned (of text)”, participial adjective).

Questions about tabula rasa

What does tabula rasa mean?
Tabula rasa means a mind, as of a newborn, free of any impressions, notions, ideas, etc.
What is tabula rasa in Tamil?
Tabula rasa in Tamil is எழுதாப் பலகை. See Tabula rasa meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is tabula rasa?
Tabula rasa is a noun.
How do you pronounce tabula rasa?
Tabula rasa is pronounced /ˈtæbjʊlə ˈɹɑːzə/.
What is the plural of tabula rasa?
The plural of tabula rasa is tabulae rasae.

Words near tabula rasa in the dictionary

  1. tabuing
  2. Tabuk
  3. tabula
  4. tabula ansata
  5. tabula lusoria
  6. tabula rasa
  7. tabulable
  8. tabulae
  9. tabulae ansatae
  10. tabulae rasae
  11. Tabulam

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tabula rasa (page history and authors); tabula rasa (Tamil 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-us-tabularasa.ogg.

Cite this entry: “tabula rasa.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tabula_rasa. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.