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Tabula rasa
Definitions
- 1 A mind, as of a newborn, free of any impressions, notions, ideas, etc.; a blank slate. uncountable, usually
"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."
- 2 a young mind not yet affected by experience (according to John Locke) wordnet
- 3 Anything which exists in a pristine state. uncountable, usually
"In his quest for rehabilitation, Connally is counting on the newspapers' behaving as they normally do: becoming tabulae rasae every 24 hours."
- 4 an opportunity to start over without prejudice wordnet
Etymology
From Latin tabula (“wax-covered writing tablet”) + rāsa, feminine singular of rāsus (“scraped, erased, cleaned (of text)”).
See also for "tabula rasa"
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