billboard

plural billboards

1. A very large outdoor sign, generally used for advertising.

   Bleak factory buildings and billboard-cluttered avenues look as beautiful, through the camera’s eye, as churches and pastoral landscapes.

   1977, Susan Sontag, “Melancholy Objects”, in On Photography, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 71

   3 more examples

   He could see it like a printed sentence, fullborn and already dead God loves me too like the faded and weathered letters on last year's billboard God loves me too

   1932, William Faulkner, chapter 5, in Light in August, [New York, N.Y.]: Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, →OCLC; republished London: Chatto & Windus, 1933, →OCLC, page 98

   The land refuses to change. The more he drives the more the region resembles the country around Mt. Judge. The same scruff on the embankments, the same weathered billboards for the same products you wondered anybody would ever want to buy.

   1960, John Updike, 'Rabbit, Run', page 31

   All America was on the verge of spring and the countryside was coming to glory, what we could see of the countryside through the smoke and billboards.

   1971, Don DeLillo, Americana, Penguin, published 2006, Part 1, Chapter 5, p. 111

2. datedA flat surface, such as a panel or fence, on which bills are posted; a bulletin board.

   When a show leaves New York, it carries posters wherewith to embellish each fence and bill board in the land [...]

   1902, “The Casual Club”, in The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2, 28 May, 1902

   2 more examples

   Toward the end of April, the billboards, which I watched anxiously in those days, bloomed out one morning with gleaming white posters on which two names were impressively printed in blue Gothic letters: the name of an actress of whom I had often heard, and the name “Camille.”

   1918, Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 308

   Until the recent rash of North London line maps appeared on station billboards in the London area of BR, the service undoubtedly suffered from meagre and ineffectual publicity.

   1964 July, “News and Comment: The Broad Street-Richmond line”, in Modern Railways, page 17

3. nauticalA piece of thick plank, armed with iron plates, and fixed on the bow or fore-channels of a vessel, for the bill or fluke of the anchor to rest on.
4. broadcastingAn opening or closing portion of a program, often including credits and sponsors' names.

   The closing billboard features Como as the spokesman.

   1975, Television/Radio Age, volume 22, page 52

   1 more example

   […] the opening billboard identifying Chase as the sponsor […]

   1981, Broadcasting, volume 100, page 22

5. computer graphicsA sprite that always faces the screen, no matter which direction it is viewed from.

present singular third person billboards · participle present billboarding · participle past billboarded · past billboarded

1. transitiveTo advertise on a billboard.

   The upcoming concert was billboarded all over the city.

1. The music charts published by Billboard magazine.

   2012, "Yogi Chill From Soulfood Music And DJ Free On Sale Digitally". Alt.emusic. He has charted on Billboard and several international DJ and Dance charts.

   2 more examples

   2009, "Looking For Benny Goodman Quartet - St. Louis Blues 1936". alt.music.big-band. This song was originally on Victor 25411 and charted on Billboard at #20 on 10/24/36.

   2000, "Steve Monahan........trivia buffs". rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1960s. No other Monahan ever charted on Billboard and nothing by anyone named Monahan ever charted at CHUM, the leading Top 40 station in Toronto