Carte blanche

Carte blanche literally means white paper. It means to give someone permission to do whatever they want to do.
What would you write if you could write whatever you wanted?

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Word of the Day: Carte blanche

Very rarely do we give someone carte blanche.

When an architect plans a building, they need to design it according to their customer’s wishes.

Engineers designing new software systems have to meet the specifications of their customers.


Carte blanche, which is French, literally means white paper.

It means to give someone permission to do whatever they want to do.


A similar term is to give someone a clean/blank slate.

If you were having your house painted, would you provide the painters carte blanche to choose the colours?

Probably not, right?

When something is needed, the designer, engineer, etc., are often not given carte blanche.

Imagine what would happen if they were.

We might be pleasantly surprised or highly disappointed.


This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 71.

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.



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