tabula rasa
1
9.6
- noun
- /ˈtæbjʊlə ˈrɑːsə/
- Formal
:
tabula rasa
- The therapist encouraged her clients to view their past experiences as a tabula rasa, allowing them to create fresh narratives.
Examples
-
When he started his new job, he felt like he was a tabula rasa, ready to learn without any preconceived notions.
-
At the same time, Andrenio suffers from his upbringing: he was raised by a she-wolf and consequently is a tabula rasa, with no communicative skills except for signs.
Academic text (1996) -
The human mind is not a tabula rasa on which external events write their own history.
Academic text (1999) -
His mind is a tabula rasa, but the world to which his mind is directed is not.
Academic text (1999) -
Picture a high school student arriving here, his soul a tabula rasa.
Academic text (1990) -
The learning environment would then print itself upon the child's mind, which is like a blank sheet: the Tabula Rasa theory.
Academic text (1997) -
The world is kind of a tabula rasa for creative value projection, realization, and fulfillment.
Blog text (27) -
As Lilia Shevtsova pointed out, Vladimir Putin came to power with a rather vague political image, a "tabula rasa on which everyone could write what he or she wanted."
Academic text (2007) -
In education, some believe that children come into the world as a tabula rasa, shaped entirely by their environment.
Synonyms
52
3.2
A chance to begin again after problems
21
4.1
A chance to start again without being blamed for past mistakes
8
4.8
A situation that gives a fresh start with no past
5
3.9
A space that is empty and ready for new ideas
Surface Forms
Morphology
tabula + rasa
Although 'tabula' + 'rasa' are Latin roots whose literal senses (roughly 'tablet/board' + 'scraped/erased') could be recomposed to mean 'blank slate', these are not English words and an average B1 learner who only knows the provided constituent words in English would not recognize them. In English the phrase is a borrowed Latin fixed expression treated as a single lexical item meaning 'blank slate', so its meaning is effectively opaque to typical learners without prior exposure.
Etymology
Tabula rasa comes from the Latin words tabula and rasa: tabula means 'tablet' and rasa means 'scraped'. Long ago people wrote on wax tablets and when they scraped the wax off the tablet it became blank, ready to write again, so the phrase now means 'blank slate' or 'fresh start'.