above board
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Honest and transparent in all dealings
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Thành thật và minh bạch trong tất cả các giao dịch
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: on top of a board
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
As I see it, it's up to Peggy, and knowing her I can't see that she'd let anything happen that wasn't above board.’
Mr Delors insists that it is up to the pontifical authorities to check that everything is above board.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “above board” mean?
Honest and transparent in all dealings Literally: on top of a board
Is “above board” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.