the.com/board
A flat slab that became furniture, business power, and the thing you climb back to after wiping out.
means A long, flat piece of sawn timber — or, by extension, a flat panel used for a purpose (a chessboard, a surfboard), a table for meals, the meals themselves, or the group of people who govern a company.
from From Old English 'bord,' meaning both a plank and the side of a ship — which is why you still go 'aboard' and watch things tossed 'overboard.' The wood sense came first; then the plank became a table, and since people ate and conducted business at tables, 'board' soaked up those meanings too: 'room and board' is the meal-table, and a 'board' of directors once literally gathered around one. It has Germanic cousins (German 'Bord,' Dutch 'boord'), and the two strands — plank and ship's side — may even trace back to separate roots that collided early and fused into one busy word.
- word origin
- Old English meaning both plank and table
- room to rule
- Corporate boards sit because directors once gathered at one table
- room and board
- Board meant meals because food sat on a board
- chess and surf
- Same word governs grandmasters and beach gods
- overboard
- Literally off the side of a ship's board
monopoly — parker brothers board game first sold in 1935, world's best-selling proprietary game
chess — 8x8 checkered board with 16 pieces per side, oldest strategy game still played competitively
go — 19x19 grid board game from china over 2,500 years old, more possible positions than atoms in universe
wall street journal masthead — famous newspaper board that reads "the wall street journal" across top of front page