Blank

How to spell blank

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce blank

What does blank mean?

1. adjectiveBearing no writing, marks, or content; empty or expressionless.
2. nounAn empty space left to be filled in, or a gap in memory or knowledge.
3. verbTo deliberately obscure, erase, or leave empty.

Blank in a sentence

• adjective

  The form arrived completely blank, with no details filled in.

• noun

  Please write your surname in the blank at the top of the page.

• verb

  The editor chose to blank out the witness name in the report.

• adjective

  He gave her a blank stare when she asked for the password.

• noun

  Her mind went completely blank during the interview.

• verb

  Engineers had to blank off the pipe before draining the tank.

Where does blank come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Old French blanc, meaning 'white' or 'shining', which the French had in turn taken from a Germanic source related to words for bright or gleaming light. English borrowed it in the medieval period, and the sense slid naturally from 'white' to 'a white, unwritten space on a page'; an unmarked sheet looked pale and empty, so a 'blank' came to mean any space left to be filled. From there it spread to anything left vacant or featureless, and later to verbs such as drawing a blank or a face going blank. The same French blanc survives untranslated in cookery and finance terms like 'blancmange' (literally 'white food') and 'carte blanche' (literally 'white card', meaning a free hand). Because the modern meaning is about emptiness rather than colour, few speakers now connect 'blank' with the idea of white at all.

How the word is built

• blank (from Old French blanc: white, shining)
• zero suffix