Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A board cut with a tongue on one side and a matching groove on the other to fit with similarly cut boards.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In carpentry, a board which has a tongue cut along one edge and a groove in the opposite edge, to enter the corresponding groove and receive the corresponding tongue of the boards to be placed in contiguity with it. Such boards are always planed smooth on one or both faces. Also called matched board.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A board that has a groove cut into one edge and a tongue cut into the other so they fit tightly together (as in a floor); see match boarding.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a board that has a groove cut into one edge and a tongue cut into the other so they fit tightly together (as in a floor)

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Despite claiming he had made his money mainly from the buying and selling of used cars, through a pyramid game called "matchboard" and from providing security for a social club and for an ice cream van the majority of these claims could not be substantiated nor sufficient to acquire and maintain his lavish lifestyle, it was alleged.

    Archive 2008-02-01 Thatsnews 2008

  • Meanwhile of those flats/houses secured under the 38% [& believe me they went for it] most are instantly divided into matchboard cells, so a 2 bed flat can fit six - eight lodgers in .... who invariably sub-sub let & as they are transient with their landlords elsewhere usually managed by agents councils & tenants [LBTH] are subjected to an avalanche of abuses too obvious to itemise.

    Smoking Guns and the Morality of Parliamentary Privilege 2008

  • It was only matchboard, she decided, run up to make many little rooms of one large one.

    The Voyage Out 2004

  • The glazed, shiny look of matchboard is still in my eyes.

    The Waves 2003

  • Chopped up into new little offices with matchboard siding; you could spit through the walls!

    Time and Again Finney, Jack 1995

  • Sometimes the wounded would have to wait for days, huddled around stoves in matchboard shanties at the edge of the airfield or in the

    Barbarossa Clark, Alan 1965

  • Fighting took place in a giant petrified forest of blackened chimney stacks, where the defenders had little cover except the charred remains of the matchboard bungalows and workers 'settlements that ringed the town.

    Barbarossa Clark, Alan 1965

  • The contrast with the little study at Rugby, with its diamond-paned window, its matchboard panelling surmounted by a paper of one's own choosing, its ledge for photos and ornaments ( "bim ledge" so called), its eggshell blue cupboards, baize curtains and window box, was striking.

    A Student in Arms Second Series Donald Hankey

  • Mark wondered why so fastidious a medievalist allowed the Order of St. George to erect those three tin tabernacles and to matchboard the interior of the Abbey.

    The Altar Steps Compton MacKenzie 1927

  • Besides the increase of numbers there had been considerable additions made to the fabric of the Abbey, if such a word as fabric may be applied to matchboard, felt, and corrugated iron.

    The Altar Steps Compton MacKenzie 1927

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