floorboard

A floorboard is one of the usually wooden planks that make up a floor.

It usually refers to a board of plywood used to make a subfloor—the rough floor beneath a finished floor. Many houses are constructed using floorboards to create a subfloor, which is then often covered with materials like hardwood, carpet, tile, linoleum, or some form of laminate flooring.

The word floorboard means something else in the context of vehicles—it refers to the floor of a car or truck.

This sense of the word is the basis of the slang verb floorboard, meaning to press a vehicle’s accelerator (gas pedal) as far down as possible (all the way to the floor) in order to go as fast as possible. The word floor is more commonly used to mean the same thing. Both terms are often followed by it, as in As soon as the light turned green, I floorboarded it so I could get way ahead of all the other cars. 

Example: I pried up a loose floorboard hoping to find treasure under, but there was just a lot of dust and dirt.

The first records of the word floorboard come from the 1880s. The word board is commonly used to refer to a thin plank of wood.

In movies, people are always hiding things—or finding things hidden—under the floorboards, like stashes of money or secret letters. Sometimes, there’s even a secret room under the floorboards that’s used to hide people from the bad guys, who are often shown walking on the floorboards and causing dust to fall on the people who are trying to stay quietly hidden below.

What are some words that share a root or word element with floorboard? 

• floor
• board
• flooring
• floorcover

What are some words that often get used in discussing floorboard?

• wooden
• plywood
• subfloor
• loose
• creak
• squeak

Floorboards are a common part of most houses. When people use the word, it’s usually in the context of construction, renovation, or floorboards that squeak too much.

If we step on the wrong floorboard our daughter wakes up crying.

Morning full of earthquakes? She’s still asleep.

— Jonathan Gonzalez (@JonathanNBCLA) July 30, 2020

Science fact #587: the volume of a creaking floorboard will magnify ten fold if there's a sleeping child nearby.

— Tim Koster (@authortimkoster) August 7, 2020

mom found really old newspapers hidden under the floorboards in the bathroom pic.twitter.com/dMUuxRFDsa

— lea wea (@biggaygengar) October 9, 2019

True or False? 

When floorboard is used as a slang term, the phrase floorboard it! means the same thing as floor it!