English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm trying to think of a good idiom/phrase for the process of questioning what you have, tinkering with it and finally returning to what you had at first. Specifically returning accidentally, then thinking "oh that's exactly what I had originally."
Reason - I do this a lot when writing essays, just curious if there's a phrase for it.
I was thinking along the lines of "back to square one" but that doesn't seem quite right as it would imply you are starting again on purpose, whereas you said it's something unintentional. I think "to come full circle" is a bit better for an unintended return. "Oh, it seems I've come full circle with my tinkering!" "They've come full circle with the design of this phone"
Probably the phrase "the first thought is always the best " suggests what you are referring to.
