plugboard

American

[pluhg-bawrd, -bohrd] / ˈplʌgˌbɔrd, -ˌboʊrd /

noun

Electricity. an electric switchboard with plugs for telephones and the like.
Also called control panel. Computers. a removable panel containing manually wired electrical terminals into which plugs or pins are inserted: formerly used to control operation of peripheral equipment, as a keyboard.

plugboard British

/ ˈplʌɡˌbɔːd /

noun

another name for patch board

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of plugboard

First recorded in 1885–90; plug + board

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.

Katie Hafner: So no plugboard, that made it a bit easier.

From Scientific American

He is remembered most vividly for his work on cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park during World War II, developing in 1940 the so-called electro-mechanical bombe used to determine the correct rotor and plugboard settings of the German Enigma encryptor to decrypt intercepted messages.

From BBC

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023