Onboard

How to spell onboard

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce onboard

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does onboard mean?

1. verbTo integrate a new employee, client, or user into an organisation or system.
2. adjectiveLocated within or carried inside a vehicle, vessel, or aircraft.

Onboard in a sentence

• verb

  The human resources team will onboard every new hire next week.

• adjective

  The car relies on its onboard computer to manage fuel efficiency.

• verb

  The software is designed to onboard customers quickly and reduce early drop-off.

• adjective

  Every plane carries onboard medical equipment for emergencies.

Where does onboard come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This compound grows from the much older nautical phrase 'on board', which meant being aboard a ship. The 'board' part comes from the Old English bord, a word meaning a plank, the side of a ship, or a table; the same root sits behind 'seaboard' and 'overboard'. For centuries sailors spoke of cargo or passengers being on board, that is to say within the boards or sides of the vessel. By the twentieth century the closed-up form 'onboard' settled in as an adjective for equipment carried within an aircraft, car, or ship, such as onboard radar. The modern business verb, meaning to bring a new employee or customer into the fold, is a late twentieth century coinage that treats joining a company as if stepping aboard a ship, and its sudden popularity in corporate writing is why people now hesitate over whether to write it as one word or two.

How the word is built

• on- (preposition, indicating position aboard)
• board (from Old English bord: a ship's side, plank, table)