Question:easy

Given below are a few commonly used foreign language phrases, select the correct answer from the four options given below.

Tabula rasa

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Romans wrote on wax tablets and scraped them clean to reuse them. "Tabula" is the tablet and "rasa" shares its root with erase.
Updated On: Jul 17, 2026
  • clean slate
  • agitated
  • deprived
  • creative
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The Correct Option is A

Solution and Explanation

Think about how Romans actually wrote. They pressed letters into a wax coated board, and when the board was full they scraped the wax flat and used it again. "Tabula" is that board and "rasa" means scraped or erased, the same root that gives us erase and razor. A tabula rasa is therefore a board with nothing on it yet. English already has a ready made equivalent for that image.

  1. clean slate: The exact English idiom for a surface with nothing written on it, used whenever someone starts over with no record behind them. This is what the Latin says literally and what it means in use. Correct.
  2. agitated: Refers to being upset or restless. Neither "tabula" nor "rasa" carries any sense of feeling or disturbance, and the phrase describes an object, not a mood. Wrong.
  3. deprived: Means being denied something you need. A blank tablet is simply unwritten, not wronged or short of anything, so the overlap with "empty" is misleading. Wrong.
  4. creative: Traps students who reason that a blank page invites new ideas. The phrase names the blank condition, not the talent for filling it. Wrong.

The philosopher John Locke made the term famous by arguing that a newborn mind is a tabula rasa on which experience does all the writing. That usage still fits the same plain meaning: nothing recorded yet. Option (A) is therefore right.

Let's summarize:

  • Tabula is a writing tablet, rasa means scraped clean, so the phrase means a blank tablet.
  • "Clean slate" is the standing English equivalent of the image.
  • The phrase describes an empty starting state, not an emotion, a hardship, or a skill.

So the correct option is (A), clean slate.

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