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blank canvas. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
blank canvas, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
blank canvas in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
By analogy with artists who begin with a blank canvas, thereby possessing the freedom to shape it according to their creative inclinations.
Pronunciation
Noun
blank canvas (plural blank canvases or blank canvasses)
- (figuratively, also philosophy, epistemology) An unmarked or empty state, offering a limitless potential for creation, development or interpretation.
After his ex-wife moved out, his life was a blank canvas.
1903, Leonard Merrick, The Quaint Companions: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.
2014, Panache Desai, Discovering Your Soul Signature, Hachette, →ISBN:But when we're truly engaged with the blank canvas of our lives, moment to moment, a timeless quality emerges.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see blank, canvas.
1916, Rebecca West, Henry James: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;
2023 July 26, Ben Jones, “EU open access growth offers pointers for UK hopefuls”, in RAIL, number 988, page 33: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.
Synonyms