breadboard
breadboard noun: a cutting board, especially for cutting bread.
Noun
breadboard (plural breadboards)
- A cutting board, especially for cutting bread.
- A pull-out cutting board underneath a counter, found in many kitchens.
- One way or the other, it was always back to Mother's breadboard on Monday.1992 June 21, “The Breadboard Ornithopter”, in The New York Times
- A device used to build a (usually temporary) prototype of an electronic circuit and for experimenting with circuit designs. Both solder and solderless versions are available; the solderless type are easily reusable.
- If you are following a book like Starting Electronics, however, a breadboard is even more useful. […] Differences lie between breadboards in the spacings and the positionings of the holes, and the number of holes in each group.2011 August 2, Keith Brindley, Starting Electronics, page 18
Verb
breadboard (third-person singular simple present breadboards, present participle breadboarding, simple past and past participle breadboarded)
- To set up (an electronic device) on a breadboard.
- If the breadboarded circuit operates incorrectly or erratically, try relocating some of the components.1990, Delton T. Horn, 49 electronic 6-volt projects, page 9
- There are many commercial breadboarding systems, but almost all of them are designed to facilitate the breadboarding of digital systems, where noise immunities are hundreds of millivolts or more.1998, Jim Williams, The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design, page 114
Forms of breadboard
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | breadboards |
| alternative form | bread board |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | breadboards |
| present participle | breadboarding |
| past participle | breadboarded |
| past | breadboarded |
Origin of breadboard
From bread + board. Regarding definition 3: the etymology is either that electric circuits used to be prototyped on actual bread boards (definition 1) populated with nails, or that solder breadboards have lots of holes and are usually brown (they visually resemble a slice of bread), or a merging of the two. The etymology is less obvious today given the popularity of solderless breadboards.
Words formed from breadboard
Questions about breadboard
- What does breadboard mean?
- Breadboard means a cutting board, especially for cutting bread.
- What part of speech is breadboard?
- Breadboard can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of breadboard?
- The plural of breadboard is breadboards.
Words near breadboard in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: breadboard (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-breadboard.wav.
Cite this entry: “breadboard.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/breadboard. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.