Meaning
Applying to everyone or everything in a group, without exceptions or selective treatment - an across-the-board pay rise, an across-the-board tariff. The phrase promises breadth: whatever is being done is being done everywhere at once. Hyphenate the adjective (an across-the-board cut); the bare adverbial phrase needs no hyphens. Regional use: General English (American origin).
Origin
An American racing-betting term. To bet across the board was to place equal stakes on the same horse to win (first), place (second), or show (third) - covering every way the animal could earn money - and, as the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms explains, the board in question was the notice-board on which the races and betting odds were listed. Ammer's Dictionary of Clichés records that by about 1950 the phrase was being extended to other situations, principally economic ones - across-the-board wage increases, tax reductions - where its official adjectival hyphenation still betrays its bureaucratic career. Cambridge now files the expression at C2 as plain English for something happening at every level and in every area, which is a long way from the pari-mutuel window, and dictionaries' shared note that the bet meant equal stakes on win, place, and show preserves the arithmetic of the original.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- across-the-board cuts
- an across-the-board rise
- apply across the board
Usage Examples
- The university imposed an across-the-board freeze on travel, sparing not even the fundraising team whose trips paid for the freeze.
- Rather than protect flagship programmes, the cuts went across the board, and the ministers defended the symmetry.
- Investors wanted targeted reform; what they got was an across-the-board revaluation nobody could price.