the.com/washboard
A laundry tool so rhythmic it accidentally invented a genre of music
means A ridged board, originally for scrubbing laundry, now also used to describe a flat, muscular abdomen with visible ridges.
from A plain English compound of 'wash' and 'board,' naming exactly what it was: a board you washed clothes on, its corrugated surface dragging dirt from fabric. The name dates to the 19th century, when zinc and glass ridges replaced bare wooden planks. Its journey from the laundry tub to jug bands and skiffle music — where players strummed thimbled fingers across the corrugations — gave us the rhythmic instrument, while the same image of parallel ridges later attached itself to well-defined stomach muscles.
- music maker
- Played with thimbles in jug bands and zydeco
- abs nickname
- Lent its ridged look to flat stomachs
- patented 1833
- Stephen Rust ridged tin into history
- war shortage
- WWII metal rationing nearly killed it off
- road slang
- Bumpy gravel roads called washboarding too
the washtub — traditional laundry tool with corrugated metal surface used for scrubbing clothes by hand, dating back to the 1800s
washboard abs — highly defined abdominal muscles visible on bodybuilders and athletes with very low body fat percentages
washboard road — unpaved gravel roads with corrugated surface patterns caused by vehicle traffic, common in rural areas and deserts