Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The mind before it receives the impressions gained from experience.
- noun The unformed, featureless mind in the philosophy of John Locke.
- noun A need or an opportunity to start from the beginning.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable The idea that the mind comes into this world as a "blank slate".
- noun countable Anything which exists in a
pristine state.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a young mind not yet affected by experience (according to John Locke)
- noun an opportunity to start over without prejudice
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Medieval Latin tabula rāsa : Latin tabula, tablet + Latin rāsa, feminine of rāsus, erased.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Latin tabula ("tablet") + rāsa, feminine singular of rāsus ("scraped, erased").
Examples
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Comments
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treeseed commented on the word tabula rasa
Tabula rasa (Latin: scraped tablet or clean slate) refers to the epistemological thesis that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory perceptions of the outside world.
_Wikipedia
January 25, 2008
aequoria commented on the word tabula rasa
Also, a need or an opportunity to start from the beginning.
December 7, 2008
madmouth commented on the word tabula rasa
I can no longer see this word without being reminded of Tambura Rasa, the excellent gypsy band from Vancity...even though the band name is gimicky and sort of lame
October 27, 2009