boarder
Americannoun
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boarders
plural
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a person, especially a lodger, who is supplied with regular meals.
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a member of a boarding party.
noun
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a pupil who lives at school during term time
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a child who lives away from its parents and is cared for by a person or organization receiving payment
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another word for lodger
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a person who boards a ship, esp one who forces his way aboard in an attack
stand by to repel boarders
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informal a person who takes part in sailboarding or snowboarding
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of boarder
Explanation
A boarder is someone who rents a room in someone's house. It can also be a student who lives and studies away from home at a boarding school. There are two main meanings of boarder, but they both involve staying somewhere away from home. A boarding school is a private school where students live as well as study. Those students are called boarders. Also, if someone rents a room of their house to guests, the guests are boarders. Holden Caulfield, the main character of "Catcher in the Rye," was a boarder; that is, until he got thrown out of Pencey Prep.
Vocabulary lists containing boarder
Commonly Confused Words, List 1
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The Circuit
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The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
After learning the basics of tap dancing from a boarder in the house where he was living, he caught the eye of more experienced tappers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 20, 2026
“I was so traumatized,” Morrow, a school bus driver and dog boarder, said in an interview.
From Salon ● Apr. 15, 2026
She met her future husband when she became a boarder at the prestigious Achimota School in the capital, Accra.
From BBC ● Oct. 23, 2025
A kayaker helped one paddle boarder to shore, and a boater helped another.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 20, 2024
I wondered if Mrs. Croft would remember me; I wondered if she had a new boarder to sit with her on the bench each evening.
From "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
Financial lessons from the nation’s history: embrace risks, don’t be afraid of debt, take in boarders if things get tight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
Financial lessons from the nation’s history as the U.S. reaches 250 years: take risks, don’t be afraid of debt, take in boarders if things get tight.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
His non-teaching role involved keeping an eye on boarders, and enforcing discipline.
From BBC ● Jan. 29, 2026
Once, they might have been rented out to boarders, but that model has unfortunately fallen out of fashion in spite of platforms like Airbnb, perhaps because the owners often don’t need the money.
From Slate ● Nov. 27, 2024
When he returns to the Roos house, one of the boarders will later report, he takes a pamphlet and burns it, throwing it page by page into the fire.
From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
