On this page12 sections
- Quick picker
- Making or building something from nothing
- In cooking: homemade and scratch-made
- Starting again after something went wrong
- A fresh start in life
- Learning with no background
- When you need an adjective
- Phrases that look similar but mean something else
- Where "from scratch" comes from
- Common mistakes
- Practice
- Quick answers
The closest other ways to say from scratch are from the ground up, from nothing, from the beginning and, for food, homemade. If you mean starting again after something failed, say start over, start afresh, go back to square one or back to the drawing board. The right choice depends on which “from scratch” you mean: making something with no ready-made parts, starting again, or learning with no prior knowledge.
Below: a quick picker, then each sense with natural sentences, adjectives such as homemade and ground-up, phrases that look similar but mean something else, where the expression comes from, mistakes, practice and quick answers.
Quick picker
| What you mean | Say |
|---|---|
| made with raw ingredients, not a mix or a ready meal | homemade, made from fresh ingredients, cooked from scratch, scratch-made |
| built or created with no existing parts or design | from the ground up, from nothing, from a blank page, from the bottom up, a clean-sheet design |
| starting a business with no money or help | from nothing, on a shoestring, bootstrapped, self-funded |
| starting again because the first try failed | start over, start again, go back to square one, back to the drawing board |
| a fresh start in life | start afresh, make a fresh start, start with a clean slate, begin again |
| learning with no previous knowledge | from zero, as a complete beginner, with no background in, from the very basics |
| formal or written | from first principles, entirely anew, de novo (law, science) |
Making or building something from nothing
This is the core meaning: you did not start with a template, a kit or someone else’s work.
- from the ground up – the most common swap, good for companies, buildings, software and systems. They built the company from the ground up in a rented garage.
- from nothing – stresses that there were no resources at all. She built a catering business from nothing.
- from the bottom up – often means starting with the basic parts, or with ordinary people rather than leaders. We redesigned the course from the bottom up.
- from a blank page / blank slate / blank canvas – natural for writing, design and art. Rather than edit the old report, I wrote it from a blank page.
- a clean-sheet design (engineering, cars, aircraft) – a design that reuses nothing from earlier models. The new engine is a clean-sheet design.
- a greenfield project (software, construction) – new work with no old system or building to work around. The opposite is a brownfield project.
- build it ourselves / in-house (business) – made by your own team rather than bought. We built the booking system in-house.
- from first principles – reasoning from the basic facts, not from how things are usually done. He worked out the cost model from first principles.
Note that from the ground up and from scratch usually go after the verb: build it from the ground up, not build from the ground up it.
In cooking: homemade and scratch-made
A cake made “from scratch” uses flour, eggs and butter rather than a boxed mix. The everyday alternatives:
- homemade – The pasta is homemade. (Restaurants use it too, meaning made on site.)
- made from fresh ingredients / made from raw ingredients – Everything on the menu is made from fresh ingredients.
- scratch-made and scratch cooking – used in American food writing and restaurant menus. We serve scratch-made soups daily.
- made in-house / made on the premises – restaurant language. All our bread is baked in-house.
- cooked properly (informal, British) – No ready meals tonight; I’m cooking properly.
Avoid “built from the ground up” for food; it sounds like construction. “I baked it from the ground up” is a joke at best.
Starting again after something went wrong
Here “from scratch” means throwing away earlier work. These phrases carry that sense of a reset:
| Phrase | Feel | Example |
|---|---|---|
| start over / start again | neutral; start over is more American | The file was corrupted, so I had to start over. |
| go back to square one | informal; you lost all progress | The investor pulled out and we’re back to square one. |
| back to the drawing board | the plan or design failed and needs rethinking | The prototype overheated – back to the drawing board. |
| start (all over) again from the beginning | plain, emphatic | The teacher made us start the song again from the beginning. |
| scrap it and start again | informal, decisive | The draft was so muddled that she scrapped it and started again. |
| reboot / reset | informal, borrowed from computers; also used of films and series | The studio rebooted the franchise with a new cast. |
Start over from scratch is common and natural in speech; the extra words add emphasis. In tight writing, one of the two is enough.
A fresh start in life
When people say they are “starting from scratch” after a move, divorce or job loss, these sound warmer and more personal:
- make a fresh start / start afresh (afresh is more British) – After the divorce he moved to Leeds to make a fresh start.
- start with a clean slate / wipe the slate clean – the past, especially past mistakes, no longer counts. The new manager told everyone they’d start with a clean slate.
- begin again / begin a new chapter – At sixty, she began a new chapter as a potter.
- rebuild your life – after a loss or disaster. Families are still rebuilding their lives after the flood.
- turn over a new leaf – only when the change is about behaving better. He’s turned over a new leaf and stopped skipping classes.
For more images of beginnings, see metaphors for new beginnings and idioms for starting something.
Learning with no background
“I learned Spanish from scratch” means you knew none of it before. Alternatives:
- from zero – informal, common in course titles. Python from zero.
- as a complete beginner / as a total beginner – I started piano as a complete beginner at forty.
- with no background in – She moved into data science with no background in statistics.
- from the very basics / from the ground up – The book teaches accounting from the very basics.
- knowing nothing about – plain and honest. I came to the job knowing nothing about wine.
When you need an adjective
“From scratch” works like an adverb (made from scratch). If you need a word before a noun:
- homemade / scratch-made – homemade lemonade
- ground-up – a ground-up redesign
- clean-sheet – a clean-sheet engine
- original – an original screenplay (not based on a book)
- custom-built / bespoke – made for one client, not adapted from a standard model. a bespoke booking system
- self-made – of a person who became successful without inherited money. a self-made millionaire
Phrases that look similar but mean something else
- reinvent the wheel – waste time creating something that already exists. It criticises starting from scratch: Don’t reinvent the wheel – use the template.
- pick up where you left off / resume / carry on – the opposite: you continue, keeping earlier progress.
- start from the top – in music and rehearsals, go back to the beginning of the piece; it does not mean making something new.
- up to scratch – good enough, of an acceptable standard. His work isn’t up to scratch. It shares the word, not the meaning.
- scratch the surface – deal with only a small part of something.
- on a shoestring – with very little money. It can go with from scratch, but it is about the budget, not the starting point.
Where “from scratch” comes from
The phrase comes from sport. In early races, the starting line was often a line scratched into the ground, and a runner who started “from scratch” began at that line with no head start, while weaker runners were given a handicap and started ahead of it. Golf still uses the idea: a scratch golfer plays with no handicap. From “starting with no advantage”, the meaning widened in the 1800s and 1900s to “starting with nothing prepared”. The same line gives us up to scratch – originally, fit to come to the line and compete.
Common mistakes
| Not quite right | Better | Why |
|---|---|---|
| We resumed the project from scratch. | We restarted the project from scratch. / We resumed the project. | Resume means continue; it cannot mean start again. |
| She built the house with bare hands. | She built the house with her bare hands. | The idiom needs a possessive, and it means without tools, not without help. |
| a make shift kitchen | a makeshift kitchen | One word. |
| He turned over a new leaf and rewrote the app. | He scrapped the app and rewrote it from scratch. | Turn over a new leaf is about improving your behaviour, not your work. |
| Let’s reinvent the wheel and build our own spreadsheet. | Let’s build our own spreadsheet from scratch. | Reinvent the wheel is a criticism; nobody says it about their own plan approvingly. |
| I learned French from the scratch. | I learned French from scratch. | No article: from scratch. |
Practice
Choose the best phrase for each sentence.
- The sauce isn’t from a jar – it’s ______. (homemade / ground-up)
- The funding fell through, so we’re ______. (back to square one / up to scratch)
- After prison, he wanted to ______ in a town where nobody knew him. (make a fresh start / reinvent the wheel)
- The engineers threw out the old chassis and produced ______. (a clean-sheet design / a makeshift design)
- I’d never coded before; I learned it ______. (from zero / from the top)
- Please don’t ______ – the department already has a form for this. (reinvent the wheel / start afresh)
- The tests failed again. It’s ______ for the whole design. (back to the drawing board / a fresh start)
- Her essay wasn’t ______, so the teacher asked her to rewrite it. (up to scratch / from scratch)
Answers: 1 homemade; 2 back to square one; 3 make a fresh start; 4 a clean-sheet design; 5 from zero; 6 reinvent the wheel; 7 back to the drawing board; 8 up to scratch.
Quick answers
What is a fancy way to say “from scratch”?
From first principles (reasoning), entirely anew (formal writing), or de novo in legal and scientific contexts. In business writing, from the ground up is the safest polished choice.
What is another word for “starting from scratch”?
Starting over, starting afresh or starting from nothing, depending on whether you are redoing something, beginning a new life stage, or beginning with no resources.
Is “from scratch” informal?
It is neutral. It is fine in business emails, news and most essays. In very formal academic writing you might prefer from the beginning or without existing materials.
Is “from scratch” an idiom?
Yes. Its meaning cannot be worked out from scratch alone; it depends on the old sporting starting line. See the figurative language guide for how idioms differ from metaphors and similes.