fireboard
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fireboard noun The horizontal shelf over a fireplace; the framework around a fireplace. [DARE labels this term “chiefly South, South Midland”]
1886 Smith Sthn Dialect 350 There are still others [=terms] which have not, so far as I know, the authority of Old English: ... fire-board (mantelpiece). 1933 Thomas Jilson Setters 28 To this day his folks cook at the open fireplace and cut pumpkin in rings and dry it on a stick suspended from the foir-board (the mantel). 1949 Kurath Word Geog East US 36 We find jacket for a man’s vest and fireboard for a mantel shelf not only in the Southern Appalachians ... but also in the corridor between the Cape Fear and the Peedee. 2004 Purkey Home Revisited 7 The mantel, or fireboard, was like a museum a catchall for odds and ends. Mama kept the castor oil and turpentine bottles there, out of the reach of younger children.