Other forms: dashboards
A dashboard is the panel in front of a driver: speedometer, fuel gauge, warning lights, the dials for the heater. It is what you glance at when a light comes on and you hope it is only the washer fluid.
The flat top of it counts as well — the shelf where sunglasses, parking tickets and a dusty air freshener live. The other dashboard is a screen: one page pulling together the numbers you care about, with charts and totals, in an app or a website. A sales dashboard, an admin dashboard, the dashboard where you manage your account. Both senses share the same idea, instruments gathered in one place so you can read them at a glance. Write it as one word, no hyphen, and note that drivers shorten it: it's on the dash.
1noundashboardThe panel of instruments and controls in front of a driver.
“The fuel light on the dashboard came on just outside town.”
synonyms: instrument panel, dash
2nounscreenA screen that gathers key figures and controls into a single view.
“The dashboard shows visits, sales and refunds for the week.”
dashboard is a panel of instruments.
Dashboard is dash and board pushed together into one word, and the driver's panel is the older of its two meanings. The screen full of charts took the name later, on the idea that everything you need to watch sits in front of you at once.
From dash + board for meaning 1. Possibly expanded meaning later.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Vehicles & Machines, Computing & Code
First appears in chapter 4 of A Man Called Ove.
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