board

See also: Board

English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English bord, from Old English bord (“board; plank; table; shield; deck; ship; boundary”), from Proto-Germanic *burdą (“board; plank; table”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerdʰ- (“to cut”).

A wooden board

Noun

board (countable and uncountable, plural boards)

  1. A relatively long, wide and thin piece of any material, usually wood or similar, often for use in construction or furniture-making.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 2, in The Celebrity:
      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 the Philistines.
  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, message board (on the Internet), 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. (uncountable) Regular meals or the amount paid for them in a place of lodging.
    Room and board
  7. (nautical) The side of a ship.
    • Dryden
      Now board to board the rival vessels row.
  8. (nautical) The distance a sailing vessel runs between tacks when working to windward.
  9. (ice hockey) The wall that surrounds an ice hockey rink, often in plural.
  10. (archaic) A long, narrow table, like that used in a medieval dining hall.
    • Milton
      Fruit of all kinds […] / She gathers, tribute large, and on the board / Heaps with unsparing hand.
  11. Paper made thick and stiff like a board, for book covers, etc.; pasteboard.
    to bind a book in boards
  12. (video games) A level or stage having a particular layout.
    • 2004, Dan Whitehead, Martyn Carroll, Shaun Bebbington, Future Shocks (in Your Sinclair issue 94)
      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 […]
    • 2015, Hiddenstuff Entertainment, Candy Crush Soda Saga Game Guide, page 23:
      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.
  13. (duplicate bridge) A container for holding pre-dealt cards that is used to allow multiple sets of players to play the same cards.
    Board (duplicate bridge)
Hyponyms
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
See also

Verb

board (third-person singular simple present boards, present participle boarding, simple past and past participle boarded)

  1. (transitive) To step or climb onto or otherwise enter a ship, aircraft, train or other conveyance.
    It is time to board the aircraft.
    • Totten
      You board an enemy to capture her, and a stranger to receive news or make a communication.
  2. (transitive) To provide someone with meals and lodging, usually in exchange for money.
    to board one's horse at a livery stable
  3. (transitive) To receive meals and lodging in exchange for money.
    • Spectator
      We […] board in the same house.
  4. (transitive, nautical) To capture an enemy ship by going alongside and grappling her, then invading her with a boarding party
  5. (intransitive) To obtain meals, or meals and lodgings, statedly for compensation
  6. (transitive, now rare) To approach (someone); to make advances to, accost.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.iv:
      Ere long with like againe he boorded mee, / Saying, he now had boulted all the floure […]
  7. To cover with boards or boarding.
    to board a house
    • Cowper
      the boarded hovel
  8. To hit (someone) with a wooden board.
  9. (transitive) To write something on a board, especially a blackboard or whiteboard.
Translations

Etymology 2

From backboard

Noun

board (plural boards)

  1. (basketball, informal) A rebound.
Translations

Anagrams

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