The term dashboard dates from the 1840s or so.
What? you exclaim. There were no cars in the 1840s! How could there have been dashboards?
You’re right about cars, of course. Karl Benz developed the first car in Germany, acquiring a patent in 1886. Henry Ford’s Model T, regarded as the first successfully mass-produced car, appeared in 1927.
But those autos, you’ll recall, were dubbed horseless carriages (though the term dates back to steam engines). That term demonstrates humans’ propensity for comparing what’s new with what came before, and actual carriages, that is, horsey-carriages, included a dashboard. It didn’t warn the driver that the horse needed fuel or that passengers’ seatbelts weren’t fastened. It didn’t flash or beep.
It consisted instead of a board that protected the driver from mud flung up by the horses’ hooves, mud that was said to be dashed. Dash can have the meaning “hurl,” “smash,” “crash,” “throw,” “toss,” or “pitch.” Think of ships dashed upon the rocks. An angry executive might dash his lunch onto a wall. Psalm 91 says that angels will bear you up “lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Dirt would be dashed back upon a carriage’s driver, and the dashboard shielded him or her. Modern dashboards are in roughly the same position, that is, in front of the driver, and the name carried over to the new-fangled vehicle.
I looked this word up because the page on this site where I find reader statistics is called the Dashboard, piquing my curiosity. The website’s dashboard contains useful information, like our modern cars’ dashboards. The meaning has strayed from its etymological roots.
No mud is dashed into my face as I face my screen. Only pleasant, informative comments, which you should feel free to add below.
