[f. SPRING sb.1 or v.1]
1. A projecting board or plank, from the end of which a person jumps or dives. Also fig.
1866. Routledge’s Ev. Boy’s Ann., 659. A long swimming bath … with spring board to jump off.
1885. Mrs. Lynn Linton, Christ. Kirkland, III. 223. The spring-board whence she took her next leap into the arena of insolence.
1887. T. Child, in Contemp. Rev., May, 717. Dumas starts indeed from truth and reality, but he uses truth simply as a springboard whence to jump into a region created by his own fancy.
1925. Miami Herald, 2 Oct., 1-C/3. Mrs. Blair believes the interests of clubwomen are too remote from the political interests of the general public to make club work a springboard into public office.
attrib. 1898. Daily News, 31 March, 8/6. The display concluded with an exhibition of springboard diving.
2. An elastic board used to assist in vaulting.
1875. in Knight, Dict. Mech.
1900. Daily News, 24 Sept., 6/3. With the aid of a spring-board he vaults with ease over nine men placed in a row.
3. U.S. A board on which a wood-feller stands when working at some height from the ground.
1883. E. Ingersoll, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 200/2. These [holes] were intended for the insertion of their iron-shod ‘spring-boards’—pieces of flexible planking … upon which they were to stand while chopping at a height too great to reach from the ground.
4. U.S. A light kind of vehicle.
1883. Stevenson, Silverado Sq., 174. A couple in a waggon, or a dusty former on a spring-board toiling over the ‘grade’ to … Calistoga.
