square one
28
4.1
- idiom
- Informal
:
casilla de salida
- After the project was rejected, we found ourselves back at square one.
- back to square one
Within days, it was back to, you know, square one.
- Within days, it was back to, you know, square one.
- We're basically, it feels like right now, back to ground floor, back to square one.
- I think we need to go back to square one.
- And when that came, I was sort of back to square one.
- And then we start making out again and now we're back to 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.
- Come though the rewards coming Saturday, Sunday, back to square one.
- So you start square one at least, like a clean slate.
- And again, it was this back at square one done this career, just I've just fought for my country.
Examples
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We're back to square one.
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So we're back at square one.
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And we'll be back to square one.
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Great, so we're back to square one!
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Unfortunately, this one major incident set us back to square one, and we needed to prove ourselves all over again.
Academic text (1999) -
It's not very often that the best solution is to go back to square one and start over.
Blog text (1) -
I've been at square one before.
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And whenever I think I'm actually starting to figure my kids out, they grow up and I'm back to square one.
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Then we're back to square one, aren't we?
Fiction book (1998) -
After a 10-year honeymoon, Turkish-Syrian relations are back to square one.
Academic text (2012)
Synonyms
12
4.3
To start again after a failure
5
4.9
You must start again at the beginning after a failure
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
square + one
The literal constituents 'square' and 'one' do not directly convey the sense 'starting point after a setback' to a learner who only knows the basic meanings; knowing 'one' as a single unit might hint at 'first' but 'square' offers no obvious semantic route to 'start'. The expression is an idiomaticized phrase (historically from board games) and its specific sense is not reliably predictable from the parts, so a B1 learner would likely not infer the meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
Square one may come from old board games. In those games the first square on the board was marked one, so if a player was sent back there they had to start again, which is why the phrase means 'the starting point' after a setback.