back to the drawing board
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back to the drawing board
Revising something (such as a plan) from the beginning, typically after it has failed. That ad campaign was not as successful as we had hoped. Back to the drawing board. We need to go back to the drawing board on this project. I think it had some fundamental flaws from the start.
back to the drawing board
Fig. time to start from the start; it is time to plan something over again. (Plans or schematics are drawn on a drawing board. Note the variations shown in the examples.) It didn't work. Back to the drawing board. I flunked English this semester. Well, back to the old drawing board.
back to the drawing board
Also, back to square one. Back to the beginning because the current attempt was unsuccessful, as in When the town refused to fund our music program, we had to go back to the drawing board , or I've assembled this wrong side up, so it's back to square one. The first term originated during World War II, most likely from the caption of a cartoon by Peter Arno in The New Yorker magazine. It pictured a man who held a set of blueprints and was watching an airplane explode. The variant is thought to come from a board game or street game where an unlucky throw of dice or a marker sends the player back to the beginning of the course. It was popularized by British sports-casters in the 1930s, when the printed radio program included a grid with numbered squares to help listeners follow the description of a soccer game.
back to the drawing board
COMMON If you have to go back to the drawing board, something which you have done has not been successful and you will have to try another idea. His government should go back to the drawing board to rethink their programme in time to return it to the Parliament by September. Failing to win means going back to the drawing board, identifying shortcomings and attempting to improve on them. Note: Drawing boards are large flat boards, on which designers or architects place their paper when drawing plans or designs.
back to the drawing board
used to indicate that an idea or scheme has been unsuccessful and a new one must be devised.An architectural or engineering project is at its earliest phase when it exists only as a plan on a drawing board .
1991 Discover Even as Humphries fine-tunes his system, however, he realizes that NASA could send him back to the drawing board.
(it’s) back to the ˈdrawing board
a new plan must be prepared because an earlier one has failed: She’s refused to consider our offer, so it’s back to the drawing board, I’m afraid.back to the drawing board
Back to the beginning or the planning stage after an approach has proved unsuccessful.