# back to the drawing board

> English word · Adverb

## Definitions
1. Indicates that one must try a different strategy in order to achieve some goal following the failure of a recent attempt.

## Etymology
Coined as “Well, back to the old drawing board,” as the caption of a cartoon by Peter Arno of The New Yorker on March 1, 1941, depicting an engineer walking away from a crashed plane.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/back-to-the-drawing-board