BACKBOARD

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does backboard mean? 

• BACKBOARD (noun)
  The noun BACKBOARD has 2 senses:

1. a raised vertical board with basket attached; used to play basketball

2. a board used to support the back of someone or something

  Familiarity information: BACKBOARD used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BACKBOARD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A raised vertical board with basket attached; used to play basketball

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

backboard; basketball backboard

Context example:

he banked the shot off the backboard

Hypernyms ("backboard" is a kind of...):

game equipment (equipment or apparatus used in playing a game)

Domain category:

basketball; basketball game; hoops (a game played on a court by two opposing teams of 5 players; points are scored by throwing the ball through an elevated horizontal hoop)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A board used to support the back of someone or something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("backboard" is a kind of...):

support (any device that bears the weight of another thing)

 Context examples 

Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise: John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed's tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie's accounts of school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, I thought, equally attractive.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)