Other forms: switchboards
A switchboard is the system that routes incoming calls to the right person. Ring the switchboard, the switchboard is busy, switchboard operator.
Early ones were physical boards where an operator plugged a cord between two sockets to connect a call by hand — a job done overwhelmingly by women, and one of the first large clerical employers of them. Modern systems do it electronically but the word stayed. Note that switchboard is still the name of a hospital's or a company's main number, long after the board itself went.
1nounswitchboardThe system that routes incoming calls to the right person.
“The hospital switchboard put me through to the children's ward.”
switchboard is a call routing system.
Switch plus board, from the nineteenth century. It named a literal board of switches, and the word outlived the object by about fifty years.
From switch + board.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA