Wiktionary

back to square one

English

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Snakes send one back to square one

Etymology

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Probably from a metaphorical use of the children’s games snakes and ladders.[1][2]

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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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 American Economy, 1860-1940. by A. J. Youngson Brown”, in The Economic Journal, page 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

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Adverb

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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

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See also

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References

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

Further reading

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