board
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "board", 5-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 "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 "board" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
board is aEnglishnoun. It means: A relatively long, wide and thin piece of any material, usually wood or similar, often for use in construction or furniture-making. Pronounced /bɔːd/. It ranks #567 in English word frequency. Often confused with bod and bor.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | board |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɔːd/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #567 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for board is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɔːd/. Corpus data places it at rank #567 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 15 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for board, with forms such as "baord", "bboard", and "boadr". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "bod", "bor", "born", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: A wooden board Board (duplicate bridge) From Middle English boord, boorde, bord, bourd, burd, from Old English bord, from Proto-West Germanic *bord, from Proto-Germanic *burdą (“board, plank; edge; table”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰers- (“tip, top”) + *-… 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 board, spelled 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
- 1A relatively long, wide and thin piece of any material, usually wood or similar, often for use in construction or furniture-making.
- 2A device (e.g., switchboard) containing electrical switches and other controls and designed to control lights, sound, telephone connections, etc.
- 3A flat surface with markings for playing a board game.
- 4Short for blackboard, whiteboard, chessboard, surfboard, circuit board, message board (on the Internet), bulletin board, etc.
- 5A committee that manages the business of an organization, e.g., a board of directors.
- 6Regular meals in a place of lodging; the price paid for them.
- 7The side of a ship.
- 8The distance a sailing vessel runs between tacks when working to windward.
- 9The wall that surrounds an ice hockey rink.
- 10A long, narrow table, like that used in a medieval dining hall.
- 11Paper made thick and stiff like a board, for book covers, etc.; pasteboard.
- 12A level or stage having a particular two-dimensional layout.
- 13The portion of the playing field where creatures or minions can be placed (or played, summoned, etc.).
- 14A container for holding pre-dealt cards that is used to allow multiple sets of players to play the same cards.
- 15A Philippine provincial or Uruguayan departmental assembly or council.
Etymology
A wooden board Board (duplicate bridge) From Middle English boord, boorde, bord, bourd, burd, from Old English bord, from Proto-West Germanic *bord, from Proto-Germanic *burdą (“board, plank; edge; table”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰers- (“tip, top”) + *-dʰh₁eti or *bʰerH- (“to pierce; to strike”) + *-dʰh₁eti. The senses "food" and "council" are by metonymy from the sense "table." Cognates Cognate with Scots buird (“board; table”), Yola borde (“table”), West Frisian boerd (“board”), Dutch bord (“dish, plate; board, plank; sign”), boord (“border, boundary; bank, shore”), German Bord (“shelf”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish bord (“plank; table”), Elfdalian buord (“table”), Faroese and Icelandic borð (“board, plank; table”), Gothic *𐌱𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌳 (*baurd, “board, plank”) (whence 𐍆𐍉𐍄𐌿𐌱𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌳 (fōtubaurd, “footstool”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: baord,bboard,boadr,boardd,boarrd,borad,obard
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for board
Misspelling Variants of "board"
Frequency rank: #567 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: