go by the board, to

To fail, go to waste, or cease to exist. Alludes to people or things on a boat being washed overboard. All our work and planning went by the board after our funding was pulled. It saddens me to think that printed media may go by the board.

Fig. to get ruined or lost. (This is originally a nautical expression meaning "to fall or be washed overboard.") I hate to see good food go by the board. Please eat up so we won't have to throw it out. Your plan has gone by the board. The entire project has been canceled.

If a plan or activity goes by the board or goes by the boards, it is abandoned and forgotten, because it is no longer possible to carry it out. Although you may have managed to persuade him, while he was at school, to do some revision before examinations, you may find that all your efforts go by the board when he is at university. I think we probably all forget that President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. There were a lot of civil rights went by the boards. Note: `To go by the board' originally meant to fall or be thrown over the side of a ship.

To be lost or abandoned. The term originally referred to falling or being thrown overboard (from a ship), without hope of recovery. The “board” was the ship’s side. This meaning dates from the seventeenth century, but by the mid-1800s the term had long since been transferred to anything lost. Longfellow still echoed the older meaning in his poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus” (1856): “Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, With the masts went by the board.”