blank.
White or pale; without colour.
Meaning & usage
White or pale; without colour.
Free from writing, printing, or marks; having an empty space to be filled in.
blank paper
a blank check
Lacking characteristics which give variety; uniform.
a blank desert; a blank wall; blank unconsciousness
Not a cloud in the blank blue sky.
Abject; absolute; complete; downright; sheer; utter.
a blank refusal to cooperate
There was a look of blank terror on his face.
Without expression, usually because of incomprehension.
a blank glassy look
Failing to understand the question, he gave me a blank stare.
Utterly confounded or discomfited.
Empty; void; without result; fruitless; futile.
a blank day
Devoid of thoughts, memory, or inspiration.
The shock left his memory blank.
Of ammunition: having propellant but no bullets; unbulleted.
The recruits were issued blank rounds for a training exercise.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English blank, blonc, blaunc, blaunche, from Anglo-Norman blonc, blaunc, blaunche, from Old French blanc, feminine blanche, from Frankish *blank (“gleaming, white, blinding”), from Proto-Germanic *blankaz (“white, bright, blinding”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ- (“to shine”). Akin to Old High German blanch (“shining, bright, white”) (German blank), Old English blanc (“white, grey”), blanca (“white steed”), Spanish blanco. More at blink, blind, blanch. Doublet of blanc.
A small French coin, originally of silver, afterwards of copper, worth 5 deniers; also a silver coin of Henry V current in the parts of France then held by the English, worth about 8 pence.
A nonplus.
The white spot in the centre of a target; hence (figuratively) the object to which anything is directed or aimed, the range of such aim.
A lot by which nothing is gained; a ticket in a lottery on which no prize is indicated.
An empty space; a void, for example on a paper. A space to be filled in on a form or template.
Write your answers in the blanks.
An empty space; a void, for example on a paper. Provisional words printed in italics (instead of blank spaces) in a bill before Parliament, being matters of practical detail, of which the final form is to be settled in committee.
A document, paper, or form with spaces left blank to be filled in at the pleasure of the person to whom it is given (e.g. a blank charter, ballot, form, contract, etc.), or as the event may determine; a blank form.
A document, paper, or form with spaces left blank to be filled in at the pleasure of the person to whom it is given (e.g. a blank charter, ballot, form, contract, etc.), or as the event may determine; a blank form. An empty form without substance; anything insignificant; nothing at all.
A document, paper, or form with spaces left blank to be filled in at the pleasure of the person to whom it is given (e.g. a blank charter, ballot, form, contract, etc.), or as the event may determine; a blank form. An unprinted leaf of a book.
Blank verse.
A piece of material roughly cut, forged, cast, etc. to the size and shape of the thing to be made, and ready for the finishing operations; (coining) the disc of metal before stamping. Any article of glass on which subsequent processing is required.
A piece of material roughly cut, forged, cast, etc. to the size and shape of the thing to be made, and ready for the finishing operations; (coining) the disc of metal before stamping. The shaved wax ready for placing on a recording machine for making wax records with a stylus.
A vacant space, place, or period; a void.
The ¹ / ₂₃₀₄₀₀ of a grain.
An empty space in one's memory; a forgotten item or memory.
A dash written in place of an omitted letter or word.
The space character; the character resulting from pressing the space bar on a keyboard.
A domino without points on one or both of its divisions.
the double blank
the six blank
A tile that can be played as any letter and having a point value of zero.
Ellipsis of blank cartridge.
It was an unloaded gun that fired only blanks.
An ineffective effort which achieves nothing. A sample for a control experiment that does not contain any of the analyte of interest, in order to deliberately produce a non-detection to verify that a detection is distinguishable from it.
An ineffective effort which achieves nothing. Infertile semen.
Used as a substitute for a profanity.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English blank, blonc, blaunc, blaunche, from Anglo-Norman blonc, blaunc, blaunche, from Old French blanc, feminine blanche, from Frankish *blank (“gleaming, white, blinding”), from Proto-Germanic *blankaz (“white, bright, blinding”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ- (“to shine”). Akin to Old High German blanch (“shining, bright, white”) (German blank), Old English blanc (“white, grey”), blanca (“white steed”), Spanish blanco. More at blink, blind, blanch. Doublet of blanc.
To make void; to erase.
I blanked out my previous entry.
To ignore (a person) deliberately.
She blanked me for no reason.
To render ineffective by blanketing with turbulent airflow, such as from aircraft wake or reverse thrust.
At high angles of attack, the shuttle’s rudder is blanked by the fuselage and wings, forcing it to use its RCS thrusters for yaw control.
To prevent from scoring; for example, in a sporting event.
The team was blanked.
England blanks Wales to advance to the final.
To become blank.
To experience a temporary lapse of memory; to be temporarily unable to remember a particular fact. (Commonly used in the first person, present progressive tense, and commonly followed by on to create a transitive phrasal verb.)
I’m blanking on her name right now.
She asked him a simple question during the interview, and he blanked.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English blank, blonc, blaunc, blaunche, from Anglo-Norman blonc, blaunc, blaunche, from Old French blanc, feminine blanche, from Frankish *blank (“gleaming, white, blinding”), from Proto-Germanic *blankaz (“white, bright, blinding”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleyǵ- (“to shine”). Akin to Old High German blanch (“shining, bright, white”) (German blank), Old English blanc (“white, grey”), blanca (“white steed”), Spanish blanco. More at blink, blind, blanch. Doublet of blanc.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.