Other forms: boards, boarding, boarded
A board is a flat piece of wood or stiff card. The plank laid across a muddy path, the chessboard on the kitchen table, the whiteboard at the front of the class, the notice board by the door with three years of cards pinned to it.
From that flat piece the word spread a long way. The board of a company is the dozen people who run it, and being on the board is a job in itself. Board is food as well: bed and board, full board at a hotel, a boarding house, a boarding school. As a verb you board a plane, a train or a ship — never a car, which you simply get into. On board means you are aboard, and also that you have agreed and joined in, so a manager wants everyone on board. Across the board means it applies to everyone with nobody left out, and above board means honest and done where people can see it.
1nounboardA long flat piece of wood, or a flat surface used for a game, for notices, or for writing.~19%
“The notice board by the door was covered in cards.”
2verbget-onTo get onto a plane, ship, or train.~2%
“Passengers with small children may board first.”
3noungroupThe group of people who run a company or organisation.~77%
“The board meets on the first Tuesday of the month.”
4nounmealsMeals provided in return for payment.~2%
“The rent is four hundred a month, board included.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 138 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Old English bord was a plank, and a plank on trestles was a table — the older Germanic word covered board, plank, edge and table all at once. Two of today's senses came off that table by the shortest road there is: the food you put on it, which is why you pay for board and lodging, and the people sitting round it, which is why a company has a board.
Middle English
bord
English, today
board
Built from
From Middle English bord. 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". 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA