It's not much of a reach to combine a question about the phrase room and board with an inquiry about the term boardinghouse reach. So pardon us while we serve up a few answers—family style—for correspondents hungry for word-talk. (来源：http://www.EnglishCN.com)

A longterm listener who works with a historical society asked for some history on the phrase room and board. The sense of room referring to "a partitioned part of a house used as lodging" has been around for centuries. And board, whose Middle English ancestor meant "piece of sawed lumber," has two centuries old—and still used—senses naming "a table spread with a meal" and "daily meals especially when furnished for pay."

The pairing of room and board is believed to go back hundreds of years, although the earliest print appearance of that phrase traces only to the mid-1800s. What about boardinghouse, the lodging house at which meals are provided for boarders and roomers? That term is older, dating to the early 1700s. But boardinghouse reach, the jocular term for rudely reaching across the dining table for something rather than politely asking someone to pass it, didn't appear in print until the middle of the last century.