tread the boards

English

WOTD – 14 April 2024

Etymology

Canadian actors Christian Michaud, Simon Lepage, and Éliot Laprise treading the boards (sense 1) in Gratien Gélinas’ play Bousille et les justes (Bousille and the Righteous, 1959) at the Théâtre de la Bordée in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, in 2015.

From the fact that theatre stages are often made of wooden boards which are trodden by actors. Compare French monter sur les planches.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌtɹɛd ðə ˈbɔːdz/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌtɹɛd ðə ˈboɹdz/
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)dz

Verb

tread the boards (third-person singular simple present treads the boards, present participle treading the boards, simple past trod the boards or treaded the boards, past participle trodden the boards or trod the boards or treaded the boards) (intransitive, idiomatic, dated or humorous)

2. (idiomatic) To work as a theatre actor.

   Synonyms: tread the stage, walk the boards

   He seems to think that he's the greatest actor who's ever trod the boards.

   • 1799, Francis Lathom, “The Second Part of the Same Story”, in Men and Manners, […], volume III, London: […] J. Wright, […]; and H. D. Symonds, […], →OCLC, page 215:

     […] I vvent, on the follovving morning, to the theatre to rehearſe; and my ignorance of ſome ſtage cuſtoms, vvhen I arrived there, vvas eaſily conſtrued into my confuſion, at rehearſing in a ſtrange company, vvhich any one vvho has ever trodden the boards, knovvs to be a much more formidable ordeal, than the actual performance at night; […]

   • 1857, Pisistratus Caxton [pseudonym; Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter VIII, in What will He Do with It? (Collection of British Authors; CCCCVII), Tauchnitz edition, volume I, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, →OCLC, book I, page 60:

     How do I know she would have succeeded? She had never then trod the boards. Besides, what strikes you as so good in a village show, may be poor enough in a metropolitan theatre.

   • 1867, Thomas Lake Harris, chapter II, in Arcana of Christianity: An Unfolding of the Celestial Sense of the Divine Word, […] Part III.—The Apocalypse, volume I, New York, N.Y., London: Brotherhood of the New Life, →OCLC, section 234, page 125:

     The sleek bigot of the conventicle is a more superb actor than the applauded mime who treads the boards.

   • 1881 (date written), George Bernard Shaw, chapter VIII, in Love among the Artists, Chicago, Ill.: Herbert S. Stone and Company […], published 1900, →OCLC, book I, page 156:

     This actress was an amiable woman; and Madge enacted Celia in "As You Like It" at her benefit without any revival of the dread of Shakspeare [i.e., William Shakespeare] which the tragedian had implanted in her. She was now beginning to tread the boards with familiar ease. At first, the necessity of falling punctually into prearranged positions on the stage, and of making her exits and entrances at prescribed sides, had so preoccupied her that all freedom of attention or identification of herself with the character she represented had been impossible.

   • 1957, Lillian de la Torre, “The Tragic Muse”, in The Actress; being the Story of Sarah Siddons […], Edinburgh, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →OCLC, page 201:

     Jack and Stephen, treading the boards together in Dublin, could not be summoned so fast.

   • 1999 May, David Savran, “Introduction: The Haunted Stage”, in The Playwright’s Voice: American Dramatists on Memory, Writing and the Politics of Culture, New York, N.Y.: Theatre Communications Group, →ISBN, page xvii:

     As Mac Wellman's Crowbar so powerfully suggests, every performance, like every theatre building, is haunted by what has come before, by the ghosts of characters and actors who have trod the boards.

   • 2018, Gordon Corera, Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service: The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, →ISBN:

     He spent eight years before the war treading the boards as a professional actor in repertory theaters in Manchester.

   • 2019, William W[allace] Johnstone, with J. A. Johnstone, chapter 36, in The Jackals, New York, N.Y.: Pinnacle Books, Kensington Publishing Corp., →ISBN, page 357:

     Low comedy. Not fit for a thespian like me. If you want burletta, go to a saloon. I, sir, am Sir Theodore Cannon, and have treaded the boards with Booth, and with Bartlett.

3. (figuratively) To write plays for the theatre. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

Translations

to work as an theatre actor

• Bulgarian: играя в театър (igraja v teatǎr)
• Finnish: olla näyttämöllä
• French: monter sur les planches (fr) (literally “to get up on the boards”)
• Galician: please add this translation if you can
• Italian: calcàre le scene (literally “to tread the stages”)
• Macedonian: please add this translation if you can
• Polish: aktorować (pl) impf (archaic, rare), występować na deskach impf, wystąpić na deskach pf
• Spanish: pisar las tablas
• Welsh: troedio'r llwyfan

to write plays for the theatre

• Finnish: kirjoittaa näyttämölle
• Galician: please add this translation if you can
• Macedonian: please add this translation if you can

Further reading

• “to tread the stage (the boards)” under “tread, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2023.
• “tread the boards”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “tread the boards”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, →ISBN.
• “tread the boards” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
• “tread the boards” (US) / “tread the boards” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
• “tread the boards”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.