wipe the slate clean
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To erase past mistakes or debts and start anew
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
xóa bỏ sai lầm hoặc nợ nần trong quá khứ và bắt đầu lại
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: to completely remove marks from a slate
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
So one killing, mystically interpreted either as the result of witchcraft, or of its antithesis vengeance - magic, cancels another and the slate is wiped clean.
In 1978, in an attempt to wipe the slate clean, Pinochet declared an amnesty to cover all human rights abuses since the coup.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “wipe the slate clean” mean?
To erase past mistakes or debts and start anew Literally: to completely remove marks from a slate
Is “wipe the slate clean” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.