Modern-day Idiom
The expression "back to the drawing board" is used when a plan or course of action needs to be changed, often drastically; usually due a very unsuccessful result; e.g., "The battle plan, the result of months of conferences, failed because the enemy retreated too far back. It was back to the drawing board for the army captains."
The phrase was coined in the caption to a Peter Arno cartoon of The New Yorker of March 1, 1941 (cartoon)
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Famous quotes containing the word idiom:
“Psychobabble is ... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It’s an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)