clipboard

nounB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,249 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: clipboards

The clipboard is the invisible place copied text waits in. Copy to the clipboard, paste from the clipboard, the clipboard is empty.

It holds one item at a time on most systems, so a second copy destroys the first, which is why clipboard managers exist. The older meaning is the board with a clip at the top that you write on standing up.

Definitions of clipboard

1nounclipboardThe place copied text waits in on a computer.B1+
“Copy the address, then paste it from the clipboard into the search box.”

clipboard is a holding place.

Where it comes from

Clip plus board, first the physical board. The computing sense came with the graphical interfaces of the 1980s.

From clip + board.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Computing & Code

Practise this word

clipboard in the wild

A clipboard is a thin, rigid writing board with a clip at the top for holding paper in place.
Clipboard
A clipboard is typically used to support paper with one hand while writing on it with the other, especially when other writing surfaces are not available.
Clipboard
Klipper is a clipboard manager for the KDE interface.
Klipper
When an element is copied or cut, the clipboard must store enough information to enable a sensible result no matter where the element is pasted.
Clipboard (computing)
A clipboard manager may give the user additional control over the clipboard.
Clipboard (computing)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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