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Glite Dictionary
board foot

board foot

2 7.2
A measure of wood volume equal to a piece one foot long, one foot wide and one inch thick
  • noun
  • /bɔrd fʊt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : pie tablar
  • The carpenter estimated that the project would require 500 board feet of hardwood.
  • million board feet
  • billion board feet
  • 11 billion board feet

And so for a very reasonable trade, he, he cut the board feet of Poplar for me for the outer frame.

Examples

  • President Clinton's timber proposal would: reduce Northwest tree harvests to 1.2 billion board-feet per year—75 percent below mid-'80s peak.

    Academic text (1993)

  • The non-quota provinces were exporting about 1.6 billion board feet before the agreement, and only sixty percent of that was going to the United States.

    Academic text (2000)

  • The annual cut on the national forest system has remained steady at about 11 billion board feet for the last quarter of a century.

    Academic text (1990)

  • During the war, the yearly harvest increased to about 3 billion board feet.

    Academic text (1993)

  • Now they are probably exporting 2.5 million board feet, and just about everything is going to the United States, and why not?

    Academic text (2000)

  • About 170 billion board feet of timber came over to the United States.

    Academic text (1993)

  • Inland, the hurricane toppled billions of board feet of forest.

    Academic text (1991)

  • A crew of five salvaged about 66,000 board feet, or 87 percent of the wood in the building.

    Academic text (2000)

  • Wal-Mart worked through The Forest Partnership in Vermont to locate a total of 700,000 board feet of certified wood.

    Academic text (1993)

  • The plan proposes an annual harvest level of 1.2 billion board feet from federal forests in the northern spotted owl's range in Washington, Oregon, and northern California.

    Academic text (1993)

Surface Forms

board foot singular
board feet plural

Morphology

board + foot

The compound combines 'board' (a piece of wood) with 'foot' (a unit of length), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reasonably infer it denotes a unit of measurement for wood. While the exact technical dimensions (1 ft × 1 ft × 1 in) are specialised, the general idea of a measurement related to a board is transparently derived from the parts.

Etymology

Board foot comes from measuring a board one foot long, one foot wide and one inch thick, so it became a simple 'measure of wood' used to say how much wood you need.