Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

tabula rasa

/ˈtæbjʊlə ˈɹɑːzə/

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.21 in modern English

Syllables: tab-u-la rasa
IPA: /ˈtæbjʊlə ˈɹɑːzə/

12

Scrabble Score

10

Letters

3

Syllables

7

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A mind, as of a newborn, free of any impressions, notions, ideas, etc.

noun

Anything which exists in a pristine state.

Example Sentences

"Near-synonym: clean slate"
"We all admit now that the Child does not come into the world with a mental tabula rasa of entire forgetfulness but on the contrary as the possessor of vast stores of sub-conscious memory, derived from its ancestral inheritances; we all admit that a certain grace and intuitive insight and even prophetic quality, in the child-nature, are due to the harmonization of these racial inheritances in the infant, even before it is born; and that after birth the impact of the outer world serves rather to break up and disintegrate this harmony than to confirm and strengthen it."
"Near-synonyms: clean slate, blank slate"
"In his quest for rehabilitation, Connally is counting on the newspapers' behaving as they normally do: becoming tabulae rasae every 24 hours."
"Facebook was a “tabula rasa with carte blanche”, [Yann] LeCun says. “Money was clearly not going to be a problem.”"

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Latin tabula rāsa (literally “erased tablet”), where the collocation comprised tabula (“wax-covered writing tablet”, noun) + rāsa, feminine singular of rāsus (“scraped, erased, cleaned (of text)”, participial adjective).

Inflected Forms

tabulae rasae (plural) tabulæ rasæ (plural)

Phrases

tabula ansata tabula lusoria

Frequently Paired Words

tablet tabula tabula ansata tabula lusoria tabular tabulate tabulated tabulation

Synonyms

blank slate clean slate fresh start

Questions

How do you pronounce tabula rasa?: The recorded pronunciation is /ˈtæbjʊlə ˈɹɑːzə/.
What does tabula rasa mean?: A mind, as of a newborn, free of any impressions, notions, ideas, etc.
Where does tabula rasa come from?: Unadapted borrowing from Latin tabula rāsa (literally “erased tablet”), where the collocation comprised tabula (“wax-covered writing tablet”, noun) + rāsa, feminine singular of rāsus (“scraped, erased, cleaned (of text)”, participial adjective).

How to pronounce tabula rasa

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