from scratch

Idioms  

1. From the very beginning, from the outset; from nothing. For example, I knew we'd have a problem from scratch. Similarly, to start from scratch means “to start from the very beginning,” as in After the business failed, they decided to reorganize and start from scratch. This term comes from racing, where a competitor starts from the line scratched into the ground (whereas others may start ahead with a handicap). [Mid-1800s] Also see from the ground up; from the word go.

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Example Sentences

Kelkar says the state is not starting from scratch, with pensions, the Vayomithram programme - a widely studied community-based palliative care system - and other welfare schemes already in place.

From BBC • Jun. 25, 2026

On Tuesday, Truell showcased the company’s latest 1.5-trillion-parameter model at Cursor’s Compile developer day, trained from scratch on over 100,000 Nvidia GPUs.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 19, 2026

Other firms have to build their policies from scratch.

From Barron's • Jun. 17, 2026

The U.S. military is using nonstandard contracts and tasking defense contractors to design new weapons from scratch to cut years off production times and hundreds of millions of dollars off their cost.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 15, 2026

I wanted to lie in a French crib and start from scratch, learning the language from the ground floor up.

From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris