tabula rasa

Definition

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

Etymology

From Latin tabula (“wax-covered writing tablet”) + rāsa, feminine singular of rāsus (“scraped, erased, cleaned (of text)”).

Example Sentences

• "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."
• "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.”"