back to square one

English
Snakes send one back to square one

Etymology

Possibly from either of the children’s games hopscotch or snakes and ladders.[1][2]

Pronunciation
  • Audio (AU)(file)

Adjective

back to square one (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) Located back at the start, as after a dead-end or failure.
    After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we are back to square one.
    • 1952 Edward Maurice Hugh-Jones, The Economic Journal, “The American Economy, 1860–1940. by A. J. Youngson Brown”, p. 411:
      Withal he has the problem of maintaining the interest of the reader who is always being sent back to square one in a sort of intellectual game of snakes and ladders.

Translations

Adverb

back to square one (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) Back to the start, as after a dead-end or failure.
    After spending six hours on the intake we realized that there was nothing wrong with it, so we went back to square one.

Translations

See also

References
  1. “Extract revised for OED Online: square one”, in Oxford English Dictionary‎, January 2006, archived from the original on 16 March 2006, retrieved 10 November 2013.
  2. “Back to square one” in Gary Martin, The Phrase Finder, 1997–, retrieved 26 February 2017.

Further reading
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