“Coming full circle” means starting over on a project, product, or idea. The phrase may have originated from game boards or soccer broadcasts. It’s important to not discard everything when starting over, as some work may still be useful.
Coming full circle is an idiomatic expression used in both British and American English. When you have to do this, it usually means that whatever work you have done on a project, product or idea has to be thrown away and you have to start over, or start over. It’s usually not a fun thing to do since you probably have to discard a lot of work that didn’t get what you needed done.
There are several explanations for how returning to the starting point has become a common expression. Probably the oldest of these has to do with games on game boards. Some games like “Snakes and Ladders” or “Shoots and Ladders” may start you over if you land on a specific space or draw a card that tells you to go back to the beginning. All of your progress is erased and you are right back to square one, usually having to catch up with other players in the game. This can be a particularly frustrating experience, especially for young players, as they see their edge or chance of winning diminish.
Another common origin story for the phrase has to do with radio broadcasts of football (soccer) matches in England during the 1920s. One of the problems with listening to a game, especially when people can take so many different positions on the field, is that it can be difficult to describe to listeners which players are where at any given moment.
In 1927, a man named Captain Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam, who later became known as Captain Teddy, became one of the first true sports commentators or commentators. To describe the player’s position during soccer matches, he developed a grid, a system of eight squares that described where the players were. They were simply called by their number Square One, Square Eight, etc, and so back to square one could refer to being on the left side of the field near goal, possibly a starting position after a ball has changed hands. It didn’t mean restarting a game.
Today, however, the gridiron reference in soccer is used less frequently, mostly because most people watch soccer games rather than listen to them. The idiom remains, and is frequently and commonly used. Another idiom that may be related to this concept is the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”. Sometimes, when you have to start over, not everything you’ve done needs to be discarded. Scientists, for example, may start with a theory that they don’t prove with certain experiments. However, the data gleaned from early experiments may not need to be discarded, and may still be important to keep in mind if scientists are to go full circle and develop new experiments that help prove their theory.
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