at square one
5
4.9
- idiom
- Informal
:
de vuelta al principio
- The project hit several snags, so now we are back at square one.
- back at square one
- still at square one
- start at square one
No, because if you don't heal, then you're going to find yourself back at square one.
- No, because if you don't heal, then you're going to find yourself back at square one.
- So when she was divorced, we ended up back, like I said, at square one, like not having anything.
- And again, it was this back at square one done this career, just I've just fought for my country.
Examples
-
So now I'm at square one.
Blog text (10) -
And we are back at square one.
Blog text (28) -
There we go, back at square one.
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So we're back at square one.
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I think it's safe to say we're at square one on this operation.
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Listen, we just need to ask you a couple more questions, we're still at square one.
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I'm sick of being at square one.
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All these years and you're still stuck at square one.
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Now here we are—back at square one.
Blog text (2) -
When it came time for me to finally get my degree from Yale, we were twenty-four, and though Bucky was about to become an account executive, I found myself still at square one.
Fiction book (2002)
Synonyms
283
2.5
To do something again from the start after a mistake or problem
33
4.1
A return to the situation where something began after changes
28
4.1
The place where you start again after something goes wrong
12
4.3
To start again after a failure
1
9.2
The point when a situation returns to its starting point
To begin a plan or project again from the start after a failure
Antonyms
How Advanced
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'back to the beginning' is not transparently built from the literal senses of 'at' (location), 'square' (a plaza or shape), and 'one' (the number); these constituents do not straightforwardly yield the idea of restarting. The expression is idiomatic (likely from board-game terminology) and its logic is not obvious cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows the individual words would likely not infer the intended meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
At square one may come from old board games where players began on square one. If you were sent back to that first square you were really 'at the beginning', so the phrase now means 'having to start again'.