blank
Noun pluralblanks
Pluralblanks
Formsblanks, blanking, blanked
- 1Free from writing, printing, marks, or other distinguishing features, often with space left to be filled in.
Please leave the bottom section blank if it does not apply to you.
He stared at the blank page, unsure how to begin his essay.
UsageOften leave something blank, as in leave this section blank.
Note
Here the old color word turns into the page. Middle English blank came through French blanc from a Germanic word for "gleaming, white," and blank paper is paper with nothing on it. From "white" it was a short step to "unmarked," and from there to something waiting to be filled: a blank check, a blank ballot, now even a blank CD.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Middle English blank came through French blanc. en.wiktionary.org
- French blanc derives from a Germanic word meaning gleaming or white. en.wiktionary.org
- White describes the paper's colour; white paper can carry writing or printing. Blank paper has nothing written or printed on it. ec.europa.eu
- The colour sense developed into the senses unmarked and having space to be filled. en.wiktionary.org
- 2
- 3Showing no expression or understanding on the face, usually because the person does not comprehend.
The students returned blank stares when the teacher posed the problem.
His expression stayed blank as the instructions grew more confusing.
UsageCommon in a blank look or a blank stare, and a face goes blank.
Similarexpressionless, vacant, empty, uncomprehending, impassive
- 4A vacant space, place, or period of time where something might be expected; also, something that comes to nothing at all.
Between the two careers lay a blank she could never quite explain.
His calendar showed nothing but a blank for the entire month.
Note
Shakespeare puts it to quiet use in Twelfth Night. Asked "what's her history?", Viola answers, "A blank, my lord": a history with nothing written in it. The noun works best for stretches of time or record where something ought to be, such as a blank between two careers or a month that shows only a blank on the calendar.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night. en.wikipedia.org
- In Twelfth Night, Viola answers the question about her history with 'A blank, my lord', describing an untold history. folger.edu
- 5Empty of thoughts, memories, or ideas, as when the mind produces nothing, leaving one at a complete loss.
When the interviewer asked about his weaknesses, his mind went blank.
The composer sat at the piano, his imagination utterly blank.
UsageMost often in your mind goes blank or my mind went blank.
- 6Short for blank cartridge: a gun cartridge loaded with powder but no bullet, fired for its bang and flash in training, ceremonies, and films.
The officer loaded a blank before the ceremonial salute.
Film armorers rely on blanks to simulate gunfire safely.
UsageMost often plural: soldiers fire blanks in training, and a prop gun is loaded with blanks.
- 7To prevent an opposing team or player from scoring, especially in a sporting contest.
The defense managed to blank their rivals for the entire match.
The pitcher blanked the opposing lineup through seven innings.
- 8A document, paper, or form with spaces left empty to be filled in at the discretion of the recipient or as circumstances require.
He was given a blank and told to enter the amount himself.
The agent kept signed blanks ready for urgent contracts.
Similarform
Note
A usage now chiefly American, naming the whole document rather than the space on it. John Gorham Palfrey's History of New England (1858) shows an old political use: freemen signaled approval "by an inscribed vote, and their dissent by a blank." Compare the space on a form. You fill in a blank there, but here you are handed one, and its holder decides what goes on it.
- 9A piece of material roughly cut, cast, or formed to the size and shape of the object to be made, ready to be finished, stamped, or recorded on, like a metal disk before coining.
A machinist clamped the aluminum blank in the vise and began milling it into a bracket.
At the mint, blanks are fed between two dies and struck into coins.
Similarworkpiece
Note
In sheet-metal work a blank is often punched out in a press by an operation called blanking, in which the cut-out piece is kept and the surrounding sheet becomes scrap. At a mint the blank is the plain disk awaiting the dies, blank the way an empty page is blank: unmarked until it is struck.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Sheet-metal blanks can be punched out in a press in an operation called blanking. usmint.gov
- Blanking retains the cut-out piece as the useful product and leaves the surrounding material as scrap. en.wikipedia.org
- The piece removed by blanking is the useful product. technav.ieee.org
- A mint blank is a metal disk whose coin design has not yet been struck by the dies. en.wiktionary.org
- 10To go blank; to become empty of content, thought, or expression, especially to be briefly unable to think of or remember something.
Halfway through the speech, my mind blanked and I forgot my next line.
The old television would blank if you bumped it.
UsageYou blank on something you cannot remember: I blank on names.
- 11An empty space in one's memory; a forgotten item or memory that cannot be recalled.
She tried to recall his name, but found only a blank.
The witness admitted that the moments after the crash were a total blank.
UsageCommon in draw a blank and a total or complete blank.
Note
Memory is a later step from the empty page. Swift, in a 1736 letter to Pope, still means paper when he refuses to forgive "a blank of half an inch." By George Eliot's Romola (1863), a whole illness becomes "a blank," time the speaker cannot account for.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The memory sense is later than the sense of an empty space on paper. en.wiktionary.org
- Swift uses the quoted expression for unwritten space on paper. en.wikisource.org
- George Eliot wrote Romola, first published in book form in 1863. en.wikipedia.org
- In Romola, a speaker calls an unremembered period of illness a blank. gutenberg.org
- 12
- 13An attempt that has no effect and comes to nothing, used in the expression shooting blanks, especially in sports.
The Rangers outshot their opponents 40 to 12 but kept shooting blanks against a goalie who stopped everything.
After a month of shooting blanks, the league's top scorer finally found the net on Saturday.
Note
Sports talk borrowed it from the firing range in the twentieth century: a gun loaded with blank cartridges makes all the noise of a real shot but sends no bullet, much like an attack that keeps firing without scoring.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The sports sense dates from the twentieth century. en.wiktionary.org
- Blank cartridges produce the noise of gunfire. saami.org
- 14Semen that is incapable of causing pregnancy, heard chiefly in the slang phrase 'shooting blanks'.
When a year passed without a pregnancy, he quietly feared he was shooting blanks, but his test results came back normal.
Once a test confirmed his vasectomy had worked, he joked to his brother that he was officially shooting blanks.
UsageMostly in shooting blanks or firing blanks; it can wound someone struggling to have a baby.
Note
The picture comes from the blank cartridge, which goes off with a bang but carries no bullet: all the noise of firing, none of the result.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The infertility expression uses the image of firing blank cartridges. en.wiktionary.org
- A blank cartridge produces a gunshot sound without firing a bullet. en.wikipedia.org
Less common meanings
- 15Of ammunition, containing propellant but no bullet, so it produces a report without firing a projectile.
The reenactors loaded blank cartridges for the battle scene.
Every round in the prop weapon was blank.
Oppositelive
Note
A military word for ammunition that makes the bang without the bullet. It turns up wherever gunfire is simulated: training exercises, battle reenactments, prop weapons. The noun clipped from the phrase, the cartridge noun, lets people say simply that they fired blanks.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Blank is a military ammunition adjective describing ammunition that produces a report without a bullet. en.wikipedia.org
- The ammunition noun blank is shortened from blank cartridge. en.wiktionary.org
- 16In tile-based word games, a zero-point tile that may stand for any letter.
Using a blank for the second E, she completed the high-scoring word.
Both blanks came out early, which limited his options later.
Note
Word games keep this name for the tile with no letter printed on it. When it is played, the player declares which letter it stands for. Whatever letter it becomes, it scores zero. So a blank buys flexibility at the price of points: it is useful for completing a word but adds no points of its own.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- A blank is a tile without a printed letter. en.wikipedia.org
- The player declares which letter a blank represents when playing it. instructions.hasbro.com
- A blank has zero point value regardless of the letter it represents. scopely.helpshift.com
- A blank contributes zero tile points, but words completed with it still score points from their other letters. hasbro.com
- 17The space character produced by pressing the space bar on a keyboard.
The parser treats every blank as a delimiter between tokens.
Remove the extra blanks at the end of each line.
Similarspace
- 18
- 19Empty or void; without result or success, and so essentially fruitless and futile.
The police checked every lead, but each one came up blank.
After a week of interviews, the reporters came up blank and had no story.
UsageUsually in come up blank, said of a search or lead that finds nothing.
Similarfruitless, futile, barren, unproductive
Oppositefruitful, productive
- 20A leaf of a book that carries no printed text.
The binder added a blank at the front for the owner's bookplate.
Marginal notes spilled onto the blanks bound between sections.
- 21To deliberately ignore a person, refusing to acknowledge their presence or greeting.
He completely blanked his ex when she walked into the room.
If you blank the new coworker again, she'll think you're rude.
UsageTakes a person as direct object (blank someone); do not confuse with blank on something (forget it).
Oppositeacknowledge, greet
Note
Slang for a snub delivered by silence. Sonia Horon's 2024 report on Taylor Swift "blanking" Celine Dion at the Grammys turned on exactly that charge.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Sonia Horon wrote the cited report in 2024. en.wiktionary.org
- The report concerned accusations that Taylor Swift ignored Celine Dion at the Grammys. en.wiktionary.org
- 22A domino on which at least one half is unmarked.
The double blank is often the lowest piece in the set.
He matched his blank to the empty end of the chain.
Note
Dominoes are named by their two halves, and blank is the word for a half with no pips. The six blank has six on one end and nothing on the other, and the double blank has nothing at all. In basic matching games, a blank end is matched against another empty end, and when hands are counted by pips it adds nothing.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- Dominoes are named after the values of their two halves; six blank denotes six pips and zero pips. en.wikipedia.org
- A blank half has no pips. en.wikipedia.org
- The six blank has six pips on one half and none on the other. en.wikipedia.org
- The double blank has no pips on either half. en.wikipedia.org
- This describes basic matching games; other games have different rules. In All Sevens, specified joker tiles can be played against blanks. schmidtspiele.de
- Blanks contribute zero when counting pips, but some scoring rules assign them points; Mexican Train variants can count each blank as 25 points. en.wikipedia.org
- 23
- 24Unrhymed verse written in a regular meter, typically iambic pentameter; blank verse.
- 25The white spot at the center of a target, and by extension the object aimed at or the reach of such aim.
Kent. See better, Lear, and let me still remain / The true blank of thine eye. (Act I, scene 2)
1606, William Shakespeare, King Lear - 26A control sample that contains none of the substance being analyzed, run to produce a deliberate non-detection so that a true detection can be distinguished from it.
- 27To render ineffective by enveloping in turbulent airflow, such as the wake of an aircraft or the wash of reverse thrust.
- 28Lacking color, so that something looks white or washed out.
To the blanc Moone / Her office they preſcrib'd,
1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost - 29A coin of medieval France worth five deniers, struck first in silver and later in copper, or a similar silver piece Henry V issued in English-held France.
Whosoeuer brought a fagot before the kynges tent, he shulde haue a blanke of Fraunce.
1523, Jean Froissart, transl. by John Bourchier - 30A state of complete bewilderment in which a person cannot think how to act or reply.
- 31A lottery ticket or drawn lot that wins nothing.
- 32In a British parliamentary bill, italicized placeholder wording for practical details whose final form is decided later in committee.
- 33An old, extremely small unit of weight equal to one 230,400th part of a grain.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English blank, borrowed through Anglo-Norman from Old French blanc (feminine blanche), meaning "white." This came from Frankish *blank ("gleaming, white, blinding"), from Proto-Germanic *blankaz, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to shine." It is related to Old English blanc ("white, grey") and Spanish blanco.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 8 facts
- English blank comes from Middle English blank, borrowed through Anglo-Norman from Old French blanc. en.wiktionary.org
- The feminine form of Old French blanc was blanche. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French blanc meant white. en.wiktionary.org
- Old French blanc derives from reconstructed Frankish *blank, meaning gleaming, white or blinding. en.wiktionary.org
- Frankish *blank derives from Proto-Germanic *blankaz. en.wiktionary.org
- The word ultimately derives from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to shine. en.wiktionary.org
- Blank is related to Old English blanc, meaning white or grey. en.wiktionary.org
- Blank is related to Spanish blanco. en.wiktionary.org