blank canvas
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.74 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An unmarked or empty state, offering a limitless potential for creation, development or interpretation.
noun
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blank, canvas.
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonyms: new canvas, clean slate, new page, new sheet, new leaf"
- "After his ex-wife moved out, his life was a blank canvas."
- "Her gaze was wide while she was wondering; then her lids drooped low, and lower, as on the blank canvas of her mental view there grew laboriously a conception."
- "But when we're truly engaged with the blank canvas of our lives, moment to moment, a timeless quality emerges."
- "There are no such personal revelations in The Madonna of the Future, nor anything, indeed, at all characteristic of Mr James. There is beauty in the tale of the American painter who dreams over a model for twenty years, while he and she grow old, and leaves at his death nothing more to show for his dreams than a cracked blank canvas; […]"
- "From a practical point of view, it has been easier to apply this model to Spain's high-speed system - effectively a blank canvas - than it would be to Britain's deeply interwoven and congested classic network."
Etymology
By analogy with artists who begin with a blank canvas, thereby possessing the freedom to shape it according to their creative inclinations.