hotbox

See also: hot box

English

Etymology

hot +‎ box

Pronunciation

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Noun

hotbox (plural hotboxes)

1. A container maintained at elevated temperatures in order to heat or cook its contents.
   • 1986, Tom Monaghan, Robert Anderson, Pizza Tiger, page 135:

     We made a hundred pizzas with a variety of toppings and put them in hotboxes — portable sterno heaters.

   • 2008, Robert Zipplies, Bending the Curve: Your Guide to Tackling Climate Change in South Africa, page 262:

     A hotbox is made from two nonflammable, insulated bags ( resembling mini beanbags ) and works like this: you place semi - cooked, hot food into the hotbox and the retained heat will complete the cooking process .

   • 2010, William Trevor, The Children Of Dynmouth:

     They collected the food – each meal on two covered tin plates and the whole lot contained in large metal hotboxes – from the old people's home, Wisteria Lodge.

   • 2013, Jeremy Shere, Renewable: The World-Changing Power of Alternative Energy, page 102:

     First, in the early 1860s, he dabbled with hotboxes—simple devices that used a wooden box with a glass lid to trap heat from the sun.

   • 2016, Sally Andrew, Tannie Maria & the Satanic Mechanic:

     A hotbox is a wonderful way to slow-cook your food. And it saves lots of electricity too.

   • 2021, Yashas Ramesh, The Love Research, page 133:

     As I looked around the living room, there were 2 hotboxes and a kadai covered with an aluminium plate kept at the coffee table. By the time I walked towards the hotboxes to check what's inside, Rashmi came outside from the kitchen.

   • 2022, Chris Pratt, Four Brothers in the Pacific War:

     Eager 'fang farriers' hurried forward to scrape the bottoms of the hotboxes and dixies of everything that was left.

   1. An oven.
2. (engineering) An overheated shaft bearing.
   1. (rail transport) An overheated axle box, bearing and bearing enclosure.
      • 1961 March, “Motive Power Miscellany”, in Trains Illustrated, page 181:

        One of the ex-L. & Y.R. "pugs" displaced by diesels at Bank Hall, No. 51232, is going to Preston for employment on the dock lines there, but when en route on December 31 it ran out of water and also sustained a hot box, as a result of which it was detained at Bank Hall.

      • 1963 July, “News and Comment: Roller bearings for freight stock”, in Modern Railways, page 6:

        In particular, hot boxes on freight trains are a persistent problem.

      • 1964, RSC, Railway Signaling and Communications - Volume 57, page 18:

        Experience with infrared hotbox detector installations has demonstrated the validity of the analysis.

   • 1972, Richard Johnson, Railroad Technology and Manpower in the 1970's, page 31:

     If a hotbox is not discovered early, the temperature of the journal or bearing may rise to a critical level, so that the wheel end of the journal may burn off and cause a derailment of the car.

3. A room or compartment that is kept artificially warm for some purpose.
   • 1964, Andrzej Doberczak, St Dowgielewicz, Witold Żurek, Cotton, Bast, and Wool Fibers, page 448:

     The hotbox should be located in the nearest vicinity of the sorting room. The hotbox is a chamber in which air can be heated to a temperature of about 60 ° C.

   • 1978, Designing & Building Your Own House Your Own Way, page 62:

     If a freeze-up happens, the inaccessible section is likely to freeze along with the section in the hotbox itself, and the tape gives you an emergency method of thawing it.

   • 1978, William S. Foster, Handbook of Municipal Administration and Engineering, page 2-13:

     The flatbed portion of the truck contains a “hotbox," a 110-cubic-foot (3.11-cubic-meter) insulated rectangular container with an integral propane heating unit.

   • 1981, United States. National Labor Relations Board, Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, page 1431:

     The hotbox was a room where the cheese was actually produced and put through a "cooker," and where approximately 9 to 11 employees worked on a daily basis.

   • 2014, Donald C. Wood, Production, Consumption, Business and the Economy, page 254:

     One of Yoshida's first annual outdoor jobs was to prepare his hotboxes: rectangular pits he dug in the ground near his house.

   • · 2017, Jack Engelhard, The Horsemen: Inside Thoroughbred Racing As Never Told Before, page 36:

     For Walter Blum, as well as for many others, the hotbox is the most unpleasant part of being a jockey.

   1. A cold frame
      • 2006, The Memoirs of John Tomczyk, Among Unknown Hostages, page 97:

        You can take what you want from these two hotboxes, because I'm only going to throw them out as manure.

      • 2011, Ceiridwen Terrill, Part Wild: One Woman's Journey with a Creature Between the Worlds of Wolves and Dogs, page 205:

        All are in need of volunteer labor to maintain enclosures and feed the animals, and each one has a wish list of items to help keep the sanctuary functioning—everything from hotboxes, jumbo-size Greenies, and canned dog food to ATVs,chain saws, and rolls of three-foot wire for dig guards and overhangs.

      • 2016, John L. Bisol, The House on Nichols Street, page 104:

        “Cold frames” with glass tops that could be sealed, were also called hotboxes (or hotbeds.)

      • 2016, Nicholas Faith, The story of champagne:

        The vines are 'bench=grafted' indoors, left for a time in hotboxes to enable the scar from the graft to heal, and then bedded out in special nurseries.

   2. A box for hot composting.
      • 2021, Alys Fowler, Eat What You Grow:

        I have two Hotboxes for composting garden and kitchen waste.

   3. An incubator.
      • 2013, Jan Murray, Twins & More, page 78:

        We didn't expect to start off our parenting journey by seeing our babies hooked up to all the machines and covered in tubes and tape—in the grand scheme of things, that time was short, and they were soon out of their hotboxes, and we were cuddling them every chance we got, which was only twice a day!

4. A room or house that becomes unbearably hot inside when the weather is hot.
   • 1997, Charles Patrick Weiland, Above and Beyond, page 22:

     With portholes and doors secured, the staterooms became hotboxes and the odor from the galley an unendurable stench.

   • 1999, Mary Twitchell, Easy-to-Build Birdhouses:

     To keep from becoming hotboxes, birdhouses need good ventilation.

   • 2004, Philip Briggs, Ghana: The Bradt Travel Guide, page 354:

     By contrast, the first-floor hotboxes – though reasonably priced at C36,000/48,000 for a single/double with fan, using a common shower – are best avoided unless you enjoy sweaty, sleepless nights.

5. A small, hot, enclosure, used as a punishment for slaves or prisoners.
   • 1980, Jet - Volume 59, Issues 1-13, page 15:

     In recent years, it had been believed that hotboxes only existed in movies such as Cool Hand Luke and Bridge Over The River Kwai.

   • 2019, Holly A. Kellison, When the Heart Is a Stranger:

     I must dress and go see what's going on with the slaves in the hotboxes.

   • 2010, Muse, The Prodigal Son Returns, page 168:

     It shot me back to days of youth when the churches were hotboxes, but the services were awe-stricken.

6. A furnace or heat source for a building.
   • 1974, United States. Congress. House. Science and Astronautics Committee, Solar Photovoltaic Energy, page 13:

     We usually think in terms of "hotboxes" or furnaces on the surface of the Earth, nuclear or fossil fuel plants; indeed some people think in terms of solar furnaces in which power is generated and distributed to the consumer.

   • 2017, Editors of Cool Springs Press, Step-by-Step Projects for Self-Sufficiency, page 255:

     When combined, these three DIY “hotboxes“ introduce enough hot air into this home to carry 30 to 40 percent of the home heating load.

7. A small, airtight space where people smoke marijuana in order to intensify the high.
   • 2012, Maxine Thompson, L..A. Blues II:

     The blackouts, the hangovers, the vomiting, the hotboxes, the detox, the shame, and the degradation.

8. A gas manifold that diverts hot gasses into a heat exchanger.
   • 1957, United States. Congress. Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Hearings and Reports on Atomic Energy - Volume 18, page 101:

     It is planned to take the existing ventilation system and use it to exhaust the areas outside of the hotboxes, but to have the new system take over for the various hotboxes.

   • 1982, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Science and Technology. Subcommittee on Energy Development and Applications, Building Energy Research, page 26:

     But we certainly have looked at heat transfer, both in hotboxes and the static circumstances.

   • 2003, Colin Bayliss, Kevin Langley, Nuclear Decommissioning, Waste Management, and Environmental Site Remediation, page 109:

     The hotbox was dismantled in a series of mini campaigns using 40-200 amp plasma torches deployed both by remote rigs and manually.

9. A soundproof box used to hold a camera in order to prevent the sound of its operation interfering with the recording of a film.
   • 1966, Manoogian, Film-makers Art, page 23:

     The lack of microphone and camera mobility ( cameras were placed in hotboxes so that their whirring sound would not be picked up) prevented the film-makers from handling the camera with ease, as they had done previously.

   • 1970, Verne Carlson, Sylvia Carlson, Professional 16/35mm Cameraman's Handbook, page 34:

     A loading room must be considered unsafe until tested, regardless of whether it is a permanent, temperature-controlled, air-filtered installation or a portable plywood "hotbox” on a sound stage.

10. A storage container for personal belongings of employees who are hot desking.
    • 2020, Darren McCabe, Changing Change Management: Strategy, Power and Resistance:

      Storage refers to the use of 'hotboxes' in which staff are required to place any personal belongings when they finish work; the aim of which is to ensure that staff no longer have a fixed place of work.

11. A location where controversial ideas are discussed or practiced.
    • 1987, Peter M. Sandman, David B. Sachsman, Michael R. Greenberg, The Environmental News Source, page 26:

      CMA's "hotboxes" give sources a chance to role-play before they face a real interview .

    • 2023, Stanley K. Ridgley, Brutal Minds:

      In this way, these off-campus, nonprofit, nonacademic clubs increasingly influence the culture of colleges and universities nationwide, turning them into lockstep ideological hotboxes.

12. (slang) A sexy woman.
    • 1989, Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View, page 38:

      They drove on with comments about "redskin hotboxes who didn't wear any pants at all," and kept calling me "chief" in a sneering manner.

13. (graphical user interface) A context-sensitive dialog that duplicates many of the commands on the menu for users of the Maya Embedded Language.
    • 2000, Perry Harovas, John L. Kundert-Gibbs, Peter Lee, Mastering Maya Complete 2 - Volume 1, page 63:

      While you can do everything you wish in Maya without ever using the hotbox, once you get used to the way the hotbox conserves space and puts nearly all of Maya's tools in easy reach, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it .

    • 2006, George Maestri, Maya 8 at a Glance, page 4:

      Another way to easily access menus is by using the hotbox, which appears when you press the spacebar.

    • 2012, Kang Zhang, Software Visualization: From Theory to Practice, page 122:

      The features available in the hotbox further depend on the type of the object that is under the cursor when the hotbox is invoked.

Verb

hotbox (third-person singular simple present hotboxes, present participle hotboxing, simple past and past participle hotboxed)

1. (slang) To smoke marijuana in a small confined area, such as the inside of a car, until it is full of smoke, thereby intensifying the drug's effects.

   Jane hotboxed the tent earlier.

2. (slang) To put out a cigarette just before entering a vehicle, then expel smoke in the vehicle.
3. (slang) To smoke a cigarette vigorously and rapidly.

Synonyms

• (smoke in a confined area): clambake, box out