across-the-board
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
16 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "across-the-board", 16-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "across-the-board" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "across-the-board" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
across the board is aEnglishprep_phrase. It means: Pertaining to all categories or things.
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See how across the board compares against similar English words.
Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | across the board |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Prep_phrase |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for across the board is 16 letters long, classified as aprep_phrase. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for across the board in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: Originated with horse racing, where an "across the board" bet was one which covered first, second and third on the betting board. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is across the board, spelled A-C-R-O-S-S- -T-H-E- -B-O-A-R-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Pertaining to all categories or things.
- 2Having an equal amount staked on a competitor placing first, second, or third.
- 3Of a move or sequence of play, made in response to developments occurring in the game, as opposed to pre-planned or according to theory.
Etymology
Originated with horse racing, where an "across the board" bet was one which covered first, second and third on the betting board.
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter A in our English index: