duckboard
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Possibly a metaphorical use of a name for a board connecting a duck hutch to a yard.[1]
Noun[edit]
duckboard (plural duckboards)
- One of a long series of boards laid from side to side as a path across wet or muddy ground; normally used in plural.
- In an attempt to alleviate the problem, wooden planking, known as duckboards, was placed at the bottom of trenches and across other areas of muddy or waterlogged ground.
- Wooden, low walkway or short part of a path with one or more planks, logs, or boards laid after each other lengthwise, often two planks wide; also called bog board, bog bridge, or puncheon.
- A panel of wooden slats typically lain on a concrete floor in a workshop. Compliance of slats arranged in two crossed layers reduces fatigue for a person operating a machine tool or working at a bench.
Coordinate terms[edit]
- (thoroughfare paved with wood): boardwalk, plank road, corduroy road
Translations[edit]
plank or board laid lengthwise as path across wet ground
References[edit]
- ^ C. E. W. Bean (1917) Letters from France, Cassell and Company, pages 38–39: “I have said before that you do not walk on the bottom of the trench as you did in Gallipoli, but on a narrow wooden causeway not unlike the bridge on which ducks wander down from the henhouse to the yard—colloquially known as the “duck-boards.”