blackboard

noun

a sheet of smooth, hard material, especially dark slate, used in schools, lecture rooms, etc., for writing or drawing on with chalk.

Also called chalkboard.

Compare greenboard.

Origin:
1815–25; black + board

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Collins

World English Dictionary

blackboard (ˈblækˌbɔːd)

—n
	a hard or rigid surface made of a smooth usually dark substance, used for writing or drawing on with chalk, esp in teaching

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Relevant Questions

What Are Blackboards?

00:10

Blackboard is always a great word to know.

So is interrobang. Does it mean:

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

blackboard

1823, from black + board. Blackboard jungle "inner-city school rife with juvenile delinquency" is from Evan Hunter's novel title (1954).

Example sentences

And a projector is easier to move than a blackboard-sized screen.

Writing the ideas on the blackboard may reinforce reading skills.

It has no desks, only a single blackboard and intermittent supplies of chalk.

Accept all answers as valid and place the word or words on overhead, blackboard or newsprint.

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greenboard next pointer scrawl whiteboard

Matching Quote

"A young professor I watched in action at one of our large eastern colleges used to stand with his back to the class and mumble explanations of blackboard problems. He was "let out" at the end of two years because students refused to attend his classes. He was given an evasive reason for his dismissal and he left with justifiable bitterness toward the administration. If someone had told him the truth he could have avoided this denouement. Sometimes professors go on for years without any conception of remediable faults which irritate their listeners."

-Mary Barnett Gilson

blackboard

black·board