shovel board
- noun
- /ˈʃʌvəl bɔrd/
- Archaic
- We spent the afternoon playing shovel board with friends at the community center.
Examples
-
He improved his skills in shovel board until he could consistently hit the target.
-
At the carnival, there was a shovel board setup where players could win prizes.
-
It looks like it's time for the game formerly known as Year I with two straight guys, but now called the shovel Board game Soda edition.
Synonyms
A game where players move pieces on a board by following rules
A game where players use long sticks to push heavy discs along a smooth board to score points
A pub game where you slide coins on a board to score points
A game where players slide coins by hand across a board to a target
A game where players push wooden disks with long sticks onto marked spots on a smooth board
Surface Forms
Morphology
The game meaning (‘sliding coins or discs on a long smooth board’) is not derivable from 'shovel' (a digging tool) combined with 'board' (a flat surface). A B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely imagine a board used with a shovel or be confused; the term is a lexicalized game name (likely related to 'shuffleboard') and therefore unpredictable from its parts.
Etymology
The game name shovel board may come from the way players push coins or discs with a hand move like a small shovel along a long board. Because players were literally 'shoveling' pieces toward a mark, the name came to mean the game of sliding discs for points.