board

A relatively long, wide and thin piece of any material, usually wood or similar, often for use in construction or furniture-making.

Noun

  1. A relatively long, wide and thin piece of any material, usually wood or similar, often for use in construction or furniture-making.
    • Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might have belonged to Dagon, idol of...
  2. A device (e.g., switchboard) containing electrical switches and other controls and designed to control lights, sound, telephone connections, etc.
  3. A flat surface with markings for playing a board game.
    • Each player starts the game with four counters on the board.
  4. Short for blackboard, whiteboard, chessboard, surfboard, circuit board, message board (on the Internet), bulletin board, etc.
  5. A committee that manages the business of an organization, e.g., a board of directors.
    • We have to wait to hear back from the board.
  6. Regular meals in a place of lodging; the price paid for them.
    • board and lodging
    • room and board
    • His board was served by his landlady, the owner of the boarding house. [meals]
  7. The side of a ship.
    • Now board to board the rival vessels row. - 1697, Virgil, “The Fifth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […],...
  8. The distance a sailing vessel runs between tacks when working to windward.
  9. The wall that surrounds an ice hockey rink.
  10. A long, narrow table, like that used in a medieval dining hall.
    • Fruit of all kinds […] / She gathers, tribute large, and on the board / Heaps with unsparing hand. - 1667, John Milton, “Book V”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker...
    • 1890, Algernon Blackwood, Christmas in England, Methodist Magazine Volume 32 pg 481. The real beginning of the festivities is on Christmas-eve, when the large parties meet their friends from far and near round the...
    • "A man," added Cripps, pointing at the MacQuibble, who took no manner of notice, but smoked impassively, "who comes to my hospitable board meanly disguised as an artist, and filches the table wine." - 1913, Norman...
  11. Paper made thick and stiff like a board, for book covers, etc.; pasteboard.
    • to bind a book in boards
  12. A level or stage having a particular two-dimensional layout.
    • The object of the game is to move the smiley face over the preset board, in doing so removing the green squares and ending up at the exit […] - 2004, Dan Whitehead, Martyn Carroll, Shaun Bebbington, “Future Shocks”, in...
    • You are able to then change a color candy with any candy around the board, similar to the way you are able to with color bomb candies. - 2015, Hiddenstuff Entertainment, Candy Crush Soda Saga Game Guide, page 23:

Origin

A wooden board Board (duplicate bridge) From Middle English boord, boorde, bord, bourd, burd, from Old English bord, from Proto-West Germanic *bord, from Proto-Germanic *burdą (“board, plank; edge; table”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰers- (“tip, top”) + *-dʰeti or *bʰerH- (“to pierce; to strike”) + *-dʰeti. The senses "food" and "council" are by metonymy from the sense "table." Cognates Cognate with Scots buird (“board; table”), Yola borde (“table”), West Frisian boerd (“board”), Dutch bord (“dish, plate; board, plank; sign”), boord (“border, boundary; bank, shore”), German Bord (“shelf”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish bord (“plank; table”), Elfdalian buord (“table”), Faroese and Icelandic borð (“board, plank; table”), Gothic *𐌱𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌳 (*baurd, “board, plank”) (whence 𐍆𐍉𐍄𐌿𐌱𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌳 (fōtubaurd, “footstool”).

Forms

boards boord bord

Hyponyms

baseboard blackboard bodyboard body board boogie board bulletin board centreboard centerboard chalkboard checkerboard chessboard chipboard circuit board clapboard clapperboard corkboard dartboard dashboard destination board drawing board duckboard E-board emery board floorboard

Related

batten beam lath plank pole slab veneer

Derived

A board aboard above-board above board above the board academy board across-the-board across the board airboard all over the board aquaboard arrow board artboard audioboard back board backerboard backer board back to the drawing board back to the old drawing board bakeboard baking board balance board bare board barge board

Noun ball games, basketball

  1. A rebound.

Origin

From backboard.

Forms

boards

Verb

  1. To step or climb onto or otherwise enter a ship, aircraft, train or other conveyance.
    • It is time to board the aircraft.
    • You board an enemy to capture her, and a stranger to receive news or make a communication. - 1862, Benjamin J. Totten, Naval Text-Book, and Dictionary, for the use of the Midshipmen of the U.S. Navy:
    • Yuan-chu-min history, that of the island’s southern Min speaking Han Chinese, is in evidence farther east, in Nan-t'ou county. After reaching the heart of Nan-t'ou' city, the county’s center of government and also home...

    Antonyms: alight disembark

  2. To provide someone with meals and lodging, usually in exchange for money.
    • to board one’s horse at a livery stable
  3. To receive meals and lodging in exchange for money.
    • We are several of us, gentlemen and ladies, who board in the same house, - February 8, 1712, Charity Frost, The Spectator No. 296 (letter to the editor)
  4. To (at least attempt to) capture an enemy ship by going alongside and grappling her, then invading her with a boarding party.
  5. To obtain meals, or meals and lodgings, statedly for compensation
  6. To approach (someone); to make advances to, accost.
    • Ere long with like againe he boorded mee, / Saying, he now had boulted all the floure […] - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
  7. To cover with boards or boarding.
    • to board a house
    • the boarded hovel - 1782–1785, William Cowper, “(please specify the page)”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], →OCLC:
  8. To hit (someone) with a wooden board.
  9. To write something on a board, especially a blackboard or whiteboard.

Forms

boards boarding boarded boord bord

Derived

boarding ax boarding axe boarding gate boarding house boarding-master boarding pass boarding pike boarding school board up