English Reference

Idiom

square one

Meaning

The place where one begins; a lack of progress.

Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Examples

“The project failed, so we are back to square one.”

“After the computer crashed and deleted my work, I had to go back to square one.”

“Despite their exhaustive efforts to negotiate a peace treaty, the sudden collapse of the talks forced the diplomats back to square one.”

Examples

simple

“The project failed, so we are back to square one.”

contextual

“After the computer crashed and deleted my work, I had to go back to square one.”

complex

“Despite their exhaustive efforts to negotiate a peace treaty, the sudden collapse of the talks forced the diplomats back to square one.”

Key words

Related idioms

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English Reference