boarding

Pluralboardings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of getting onto a ship, aircraft, train, or bus.

   Boarding will begin once all first-class passengers are seated.

   The crew announced that boarding had been delayed by an hour.

   Similarembarkation

   Oppositedisembarkation

   Note

   Transit planners count it. In their usage, boardings and alightings are the passengers getting on and off at each stop, tallied along a route. In that countable plural, a boarding is one passenger's entry rather than the whole process. Elsewhere the word is usually uncountable, as in the airport announcement that boarding has begun.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of board.

   Passengers are boarding through the rear doors only.

   The marines were boarding the vessel under heavy fire.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of the verb, not only getting onto a vehicle. It also covers lodging: a family may be boarding a student, giving meals and a room, or a student may be boarding with a family, where the verb takes no object. An archaic use, to accost someone, turns up in older prose. As a noun, the same spelling names the act of embarking.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The activity of riding a skateboard.

   Years of boarding had left scars on both his elbows.

   Boarding down the empty parking ramp was their afternoon ritual.

   Similarskateboarding, skating

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A structure made of wooden boards.

   The old fence was a patchwork of rough, weathered boarding.

   They sealed off the empty house with sheets of plywood and boarding.

   Similarplanking, paneling

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of a sailor or armed party attacking an enemy ship by climbing aboard it.

   The boarding of the merchant vessel ended in a brief, bloody struggle.

   Cannon fire gave way to boarding once the two ships were locked together.

6. 6
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A penalty called in ice hockey for violently pushing an opponent into the boards that surround the rink.

   The referee called boarding after the defenseman slammed his opponent face-first into the glass.

   A five-minute major for boarding left the team short-handed.

   Note

   Here the boards are the wall around an ice rink, not the planks of a deck or fence. The infraction is driving an opponent dangerously into that wall, and the punishment scales with the force used and any injury: it can be a minor, a major or a match penalty. Referees and commentators usually use it without an article: the referee called boarding.

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