[f. BACK sb.]
† 1. = LARBOARD. Only in OE.: see BABORD.
2. A board placed at, or forming, the back of anything, e.g., of a picture, a cart, a boat.
1761. Brit. Mag., II. 613. Artfully concealed behind the back-board of Perrott’s picture.
1769. Falconer, Mar. Dict., Back-Board, a piece of board of a semicircular figure, placed transversly in the after-part of a boat, and serving the passengers to recline against.
1877. Tinsley’s Mag., Aug., 220. Wife and family in the ramshackle tax-cart, the little ones ‘creening’ over the back-board.
3. A board attached to the rim of a water-wheel to prevent the water from running off the floats into the interior of the wheel.
1864. Webster cites Nicholson.
4. A board held or strapped across the back to straighten the figure.
1794–1801. E. Darwin, Zoon., III. 143. Methods of confining or directing the growth of young people … such as backboards.
1801. Mar. Edgeworth, Fr. Governess (1831), 176. Her person had undergone all the tortures of back-boards, collars, stocks, dumb-bells.
1880. J. South, Househ. Surg. (ed. 4), 332. Another abominable contrivance called a backboard … by which the girl’s arms were trussed behind her, in much the same way as the wings of a roast fowl.
5. ‘That part of the lathe which is sustained by the four legs, and which sustains the pillars that support the puppet-bar.’ Weale, Dict. Terms, 1849.
