tabula rasa

See also: tábula rasa

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtæbjʊlə ˈɹɑːzə/, /ˈtæbjʊlə ˈɹeɪzə/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

Noun

tabula rasa (usually uncountable, plural tabulae rasae or tabulæ rasæ)

1. (philosophy, epistemology) A mind, as of a newborn, free of any impressions, notions, ideas, etc.; a blank slate.
   • 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 173:

     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. Anything which exists in a pristine state.
   • 1975 October 27, Aaron Latham, “John Connally on the Comeback Road”, in New York, volume 8, number 43, pages 47–48:

     In his quest for rehabilitation, Connally is counting on the newspapers' behaving as they normally do: becoming tabulae rasae every 24 hours.

   • 2026 January 3, Melissa Heikkilä, “Lunch with the FT: Yann LeCun”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 3:

     Facebook was a “tabula rasa with carte blanche”, [Yann] LeCun says. “Money was clearly not going to be a problem.”

Translations

the idea that the mind comes into the world as a blank state

• Danish: ubeskrevet blad n
• Dutch: onbeschreven blad n
• Finnish: tyhjä taulu (fi), tabula rasa (fi)
• French: tabula rasa (fr) f
• Icelandic: óskrifuð tafla f, óskrifað blað n
• Indonesian: tabula rasa (id)
• Italian: tabula rasa f
• Japanese: 白紙状態 (hakushi jōtai)
• Korean: 백지상태(白紙狀態) (ko) (baekjisangtae)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: ubeskrevet blad n, tabula rasa (no) m

• Polish: tabula rasa (pl) f
• Portuguese: tábula rasa f
• Russian: чистая доска (čistaja doska), та́була ра́са (tábula rása), та́була ра́за (tábula ráza)
• Spanish: tábula rasa f, tabla rasa f
• Turkish: boş levha

Further reading

• tabula rasa on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Indonesian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Latin tabula rāsa (literally “erased tablet”).

Noun

tabula rasa

1. (education) tabula rasa

Further reading

• “tabula rasa”, in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia [Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language] (in Indonesian), Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Latin tabula rāsa (literally “erased tablet”).

Noun

tabula rasa f (invariable)

1. tabula rasa (all senses)

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

tabula rasa m

1. tabula rasa (all senses)

Polish

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Latin tabula rasa.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈta.bu.la ˈra.za/
• Syllabification: ta‧bu‧la ra‧sa

Noun

tabula rasa f (indeclinable)

1. (philosophy) tabula rasa (the idea that the mind comes into the world as a blank state)

Further reading

• tabula rasa in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• tabula rasa in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Spanish

Noun

tabula rasa f (uncountable)

1. tabula rasa

Further reading

• “tabula rasa”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025