1018. This week, we look at the meanings of the word "board," including the differences between board games, table games, and table-top games. We also look at the punctuation of participial phrases, helping you understand when to use commas in sentences like "She yelled at me, making me cry" versus "She is the lady making me cry."
1018. This week, we look at the meanings of the word "board," including the differences between board games, table games, and table-top games. We also look at the punctuation of participial phrases, helping you understand when to use commas in sentences like "She yelled at me, making me cry" versus "She is the lady making me cry."
The "board" segment is by Samantha Enslen, who runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at DragonflyEditorial.com.
The "commas with participial phrases" segment is by Bonnie Mills, who has been a copy editor since 1996.
🔗 Share your familect recording in a WhatsApp chat.
🔗 Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.
🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter.
🔗 Take our advertising survey.
🔗 Get the edited transcript.
🔗 Get Grammar Girl books.
🔗 Join Grammarpalooza. Get ad-free and bonus episodes at Apple Podcasts or Subtext. Learn more about the difference.
| HOST: Mignon Fogarty
| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475).
| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.
| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.
| Grammar Girl Social Media Links: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook.Threads. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon.
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about the word "board" and all its different meanings, including the difference between board games, table games, and table-top games. And then we'll talk about when to use commas with participial phrases like "making me laugh" and "making me cry."
by Samantha Enslen
The word “board” can be traced back to Old English. It originally meant a table. Today, we still talk about “board games,” “table games,” and “table-top games.” But which is which?
Have you ever wondered why we use the expression “above board” to mean totally honest? Or why we tell someone to “get on board” when we want them to agree with us?
Long story short, it's because the simple word “board” — B-O-A-R-D — has developed a bunch of different meanings over time. And now we're going to explore those meanings, starting way back in the first century AD, when Old English was spoken across Britain.
Back in those days, "board" had a simpler spelling: B-O-R-D or sometimes B-U-R-D. Its earliest meaning was a plank of wood. But it quickly came to mean a table — specifically, a table used for meals.
Soon, the meaning of “board” got more specific: not just a table, but a table already set with food and drink. And by the 1300s, “board” came to mean the actual food itself. And soon after that, it also came to mean the meals that would be provided to you in a place of lodging, like an inn. That gave birth to the expression we still use today — "room and board” — meaning a place to sleep and food to eat.
By the 1200s, “board” was being used to mean not just a table, but furniture that was kind of like a table. For example, the expression “God's bord” meant an altar in a church. People began to talk about “dressing boards,” what we now call “dressers.” There were “sideboards,” tables that ran along the side of a room. And of course, “cupboards” [cup boards] — furniture that held cups, plates, and silverware.
In the 1400s, “board” came to mean a notice board. Picture a wooden sign in the middle of a town square, with someone shouting “hear ye, hear ye” nearby. And today, “board” is still used to mean “a big sign.” We have scoreboards in sports stadiums, and we have “the big board,” slang for the New York Stock Exchange. Today, trading is done electronically, but in the early days of the stock exchange, stock prices and purchases were shown on a big wooden board and updated throughout the day, so traders could easily see changes from the trading pits.
People also started to use the word “board” to refer to a tablet or frame for playing games. That gave us the chessboard and backgammon board, for example.
We still use the term “board games” in the United States to refer to games played on a flat surface, with pieces we move around—like Candyland, Monopoly, and Settlers of Catan. Germans use the same expression — Brettspiel —meaning “board game.”
But in Spain and Italy, these are called “table games.” In Spanish, Monopoly would be a “juego de mesa”; in Italian, a “giochi da tavolo.” Both phrases literally mean “games of the table.”
Not to cause confusion, but in the US, we also have “table-top games.” We use this phrase for complex role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and Warhammer. These games can stretch out over several sessions of play, and they often involve dice, cards, miniature figures, and elaborate storylines.
Finally, there are “table games” in the world of gambling. In a casino, these include poker, blackjack, and craps, often played on a distinctive green felt table.
Over time, a lot of metaphors grew out of these games. In the 1500s, the expression “above board” appeared, describing someone holding their playing cards above the top of the table, to show that they weren't cheating. Today, when we say something is “above board,” we mean that it’s completely legitimate.
Another expression, “to sweep the board,” meant to take all the cards or to grab all the stakes on the table after winning. Today, “sweeping the board” means to take all the honors or prizes at any type of event.
Gambling also gave us the expression “across the board.” This originally meant to place a bet on the first-, second-, and third-place winners in a race, hedging your bets. Today, “across the board” just means "in all classes or categories."
There are two more meanings of “board” that we'll talk about today. Remember how in the earliest days of Old English a board was a table? Well, village councils sat around boards to meet. And pretty soon, “board” became shorthand for the council itself. We see that meaning today in phrases like “board of directors” and “chairperson of the board.”
Finally, “board” was also used in Old English to mean the side of a ship. That led to the terms "overboard," "larboard" (to the left of a ship, when looking forward) and "starboard" (to the right of a ship). It also gave us the expression “by the board,” meaning to fall over the side. Today, if something goes “by the board,” we mean that it’s gone for once and for all.
And when old-time pirates brought a ship “on board,” they were steering it right alongside another ship — usually, so they could attack it.
That led to today’s expression “to get on board” with something, meaning to get right alongside someone’s idea, plan, or proposal.
Those are some of the many expressions and meanings that grew from one tiny word in Old English. Hopefully, all this information hasn’t left you by the board!
That segment was written by Samantha Enslen, who runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at DragonflyEditorial.com.
This next segment is about using commas with participial phrases.
by Bonnie Mills
In past Grammar Girl episodes, I’ve talked about how to use the words “which” and “that” with restrictive and nonrestrictive elements. And this time, we’ll help you figure out what the concepts of restrictive and nonrestrictive have to do with participial phrases such as “making me cry” and “banging his nose” and when to use a comma before these phrases.
In case you’re not up on the concepts of restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, here’s a quick review so we’re all on the same page. “A restrictive clause is just part of a sentence that you can’t get rid of because it specifically restricts some other part of the sentence.” You could say, “The boy who threw up on Space Mountain wished he had stayed home.” Here, the “who” clause is restrictive: It defines which particular boy wished he had stayed home, so you can’t delete the clause, and you don't use commas around it.
On the other hand, “a nonrestrictive clause is something that can be left off without changing the meaning of the sentence. You can think of a nonrestrictive clause as simply additional information.” Such clauses “are usually surrounded by, or preceded by, commas.” An example is the “which” clause in this sentence: “The town, which lies thirty miles from the capital, is famous for its potato festival.” The “which” clause is surrounded by commas. It contains additional information that you don't need to understand the sentence, so you can delete the clause if you want.
It can be easy to get confused about restrictive and nonrestrictive elements, so remember this: If it’s extra information, use extra commas.
Now let’s get to the issue at hand. We’re comparing sentences like “She yelled at me, making me cry” and “She is the lady making me cry.” One of these “making me cry” phrases is restrictive, and one is not.
Before we reveal which sentence needs a comma and which doesn’t, let’s go back to a term from the beginning of the segment: "participial phrase." To understand what that is, we need to learn about participles: According to the Grammar Desk Reference, “Participles take two forms: present participles always end in '-ing,' and past participles usually end in '-d' or '-ed.'” Here, we’re concerned with present participles, such as “making.” “Making me cry” is a participial phrase because it is headed up by the participle “making.”
Participial phrases can appear anywhere in a sentence, but today we’re focusing on those that come at the end. The problem with sentence-ending participial phrases is that writers often add such a phrase as an afterthought, and they often omit a needed comma. You can’t just stick on a phrase somewhere without paying attention to punctuation. If a participial phrase comes at the end of a sentence, use a comma—unless the phrase is restrictive.
So now we’re back to restrictive versus nonrestrictive. Remember: If it’s extra information, use extra commas. In the sentence “She yelled at me, making me cry,” you use a comma because “making me cry” is extra information. Here’s another example: “Everyone over 50 was fired, causing an uproar.” “Making me cry” and “causing an uproar” are acting as afterthoughts in these sentences, so both require a comma beforehand.
You may have noticed that I paused slightly before the participial phrases. That’s no surprise, because commas often indicate slight breaks. It’s a myth that you put in commas wherever you would pause — don’t rely on that fake rule — but it’s true that you often pause when you hit a comma when you’re reading a sentence aloud. If you missed the pauses before, listen now to this new example: “He ran into the wall, banging his nose in the process.”
Now let’s consider some sentence-ending participial phrases that don’t require a comma. You already heard the sentence “She is the lady making me cry.” Here, we don’t use a comma because we can’t delete the phrase “making me cry.” This phrase defines which particular lady we’re talking about. It’s restrictive. It’s not extra information; it’s essential information. If we delete “making me cry,” we’re left with “She is the lady,” which doesn’t have the same meaning.
Here’s another example: “I saw the waves crashing onto the surfer.” Here, “crashing onto the surfer” tells us something very specific about the waves: what the waves were doing. It’s not extra information; it’s essential to the sentence.
Again, notice that when I read the sentence aloud, there was no pause before the participial phrase. I’m going to say this again because it’s important: A pause in a sentence does not mean that’s where you use a comma. However, in this specific instance, there’s no comma because the clause is restrictive, and I didn’t pause when I read it aloud. “I saw the waves crashing onto the surfer.”
To wrap up, when your sentence ends with a participial phrase, you need to decide if the phrase contains extra information or crucial information. If it’s added information, add a comma.
This article was written by Bonnie Mills, who's been a copy editor since 1996.
Finally, I have a familect story from Amanda.
Hi, Mignon. I'm Amanda from Melbourne, Australia.
My familect story goes back to the late 1960s, early 1970s, when I used to listen to a five-minute breakfast radio story called "The Adventures of Smocker the Cat."
Smocker's favorite food was a crunchy delight called catty grits.
Mum, only half listening and half paying attention, misremembered this as "kitty grits," which we then shortened to "gritties."
Fast forward now to last year when I was catching up with a friend who was telling me about her new cat.
She told me how they'd been feeding it gritties.
I'm so excited. Where did you get that term from?
She laughed because she'd got it from me when we lived in a share house.
Thanks a lot for your show, I love listening.
Thanks, Amanda. How funny. You're more influential than you remembered. I love it when familects spread too.
If you want to share your family word story, your familect, you can use WhatsApp or voicemail, and you'll find all the information in the show notes.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Morgan Christianson in advertising, Brannan Goetschius, director of podcasts; Davina Tomlin in marketing; Holly Hutchings in digital operations; Dan Feierabend in audio; and Nat Hoopes in marketing who is playing his first season of Fantasy Football.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip-a-day book "The Grammar Daily." That's all. Thanks for listening.