on board
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
supporting or participating in a project
Literally: on a ship
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
North Sea oil came on board and suddenly we had a product which people wanted to buy.
He also agrees to my request to take Fairfax on board as historical adviser and fixes a meeting in London in a few weeks to review progress.
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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “on board” mean?
supporting or participating in a project Literally: on a ship
Is “on board” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.