duckboard
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.
- Synonyms: bog board, bog bridge, puncheon
- A panel of wooden slats typically laid on a concrete floor in a workshop, to reduce 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.”