A backsplash is a panel placed behind a stove top to protect the wall from being splashed by the soup-spoon of an exuberant or gesticulating chef. The name of this panel appeared in the early 1950s in imitation of the word dashboard: dashboards were invented, or at least named, in the mid nineteenth century as a means of preventing the occupants of a carriage from being spattered by the mud dashed up by the horses’ hooves. When automobiles were invented, dashboard was borrowed as the name for the surface above the steering console.