Early references to the English word are rare but in Latin texts garments and fabrics more generally were often described as having the colour of blood especially in early wills.
In early iron forge accounts ‘bloom’ was the word for the iron that was produced in a bloomer hearth, a primitive furnace; a mass of relatively pure malleable iron which had received its first hammering.
The OED has references to the verb from c.1386 and to the noun from c.1340, and the wide range of meanings is mostly to do with confused or stupid behaviour.
The word was in use in Old English but it has a wide range of meanings and a very complicated etymology. It could refer to a thin piece of timber, longer than it was broad, and generally thinner than a plank, as in the compound term floor-board.
In some colliery records there appears to be little difference in meaning between board and boardgate, but usually the latter describes a passage into or connecting the 'boards' rather than a place of work.
Collock had more than one meaning but it often referred to a wooden pail or bucket and ‘bochecollock’ or collock-mender occurred as a by-name from the thirteenth century.