pill-box
(ˈpɪlbɒks)
[f. pill n.2 + box n.2]
a. A box for holding pills; a shallow cylindrical box of cardboard for this purpose.
| 1730 Maryland Hist. Mag. (1924) XIX. 182 From Eyre & Beecher (Druggists)... 12 Papers pill boxes. 1737 Knight in Phil. Trans. XLI. 706 The hairy Substance, or fine Capillamenta, inclosed in the Pill-box, were discharged. 1741 Richardson Pamela I. 3, I seal it up in one of the little Pill boxes which my Lady had. 1872 Ruskin Fors Clav. II. xxiv. 4 The first shilling I ever got in my life I put in a pill-box and put it under my pillow, and couldn't sleep all night for satisfaction. 1934 G. B. Shaw Too True to be Good i. 27 A measuring glass, a pill box, a clinical thermometer in a glass of water. 1977 Halcyon Days Catal. 8 A new range of small pill-boxes with snap-on enamelled lids. |
b. Ludicrously applied to various boxes, closed vehicles, or enclosures of narrow dimensions; spec. a small round concrete emplacement used for housing a machine-gun or similar weapon; also transf. and fig. Also, short for pill-box cap, hat.
| 1835–40 Haliburton Clockm. (1862) 402 Packed up in a snug pill-box in the same grave-yard. 1855 Dickens Dorrit i. xxxiii, A one-horse carriage, irreverently called, at that period of English history, a pill-box. 1871 Kingsley At Last x, Getting up to preach in a sort of pill-box on a long stalk. 1883 Congregationalist May 374 ‘Pill-boxes’, as pulpits are sometimes appropriately called. 1887 R. D. Blumenfeld Diary 27 June (1930) 17 The pill-box..protects only a small portion of the head and forehead from the sun. 1893 Vizetelly Glances Back I. xxi. 410 The select assemblage, crammed into the little pill-box called a town-hall. 1903 Longm. Mag. Aug. 289 The ‘pill-box’, as Lady Mary irreverently named the vicar's covered waggonette. 1917 Scotsman 13 Sept. 6/4 The strength of these concreted farm cellars and individual pillboxes is amazing. 1923 Daily Mail 26 Feb. 7 On reaching shore again he [sc. a fox] made for the cliffs and hid in a concrete pill-box, where he was caught and killed. 1929 Papers Mich. Acad. Sci., Arts & Lett. X. 314/2 Pill-boxes, concrete structures or blockhouses developed by the Germans for use in their ‘elastic’ defense. They were employed as machine-gun nests. 1930 H. A. Taylor Good-Bye to Battlefields 136 The Germans, by means of their almost indestructible pill-boxes, have taught the inhabitants the virtues of concrete. 1935 A. J. Pollock Underworld Speaks 88/1 Pill box, enclosure of machine gun on prison wall. 1944 Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Va.) 2 Oct. 1/8 The planes dropped hundreds of tons of explosives on Nazi pillboxes and gunposts. 1958 L. Durrell Mountolive viii. 166 Red pill-boxes mounted upon cancelled faces. 1958 Listener 4 Dec. 933/2 Is it another pill-box attempt to debunk the shameful Victorians of the middle and upper classes because the contemplation of the shameless purity and austerity of their private lives is galling to the rebellious youth of today? 1968 T. Parker People of Streets 27, I was the lift boy and I had one of those round hats, pill-boxes they used to call them. 1973 Guardian 6 Mar. 6 The pillbox on the left is in yellow straw with a white daisy. 1974 Times 16 Jan. 2/4 He had led Mr Brook across the fields... They rested in a wartime pillbox and then got a lift to the outskirts of Chelmsford. 1978 J. Krantz Scruples iv. 99 Billy, about to go for job interviews, took herself to the custom-order millinery salon..in order to have Halston, then Jackie Kennedy's favorite hat designer, make her one perfect pillbox. |
c. attrib. and Comb. Like a pill-box in shape or size, as pill-box cap, pill-box hat, pill-box house; also pill-box maker; pill-box hydatid (see quot. 1893).
| 1836–9 Todd's Cycl. Anat. II. 117/2 Pill-box Hydatid of Hunter. 1851 in Illustr. Lond. News 5 Aug. (1854) 119/3 (Occupations of People) Pill-box maker. 1862 Macm. Mag. Aug. 284/1 One of those little wooden pill-box houses you see about seaport towns. 1893 Syd. Soc. Lex., P[ill-box] hydatid, a sterile hydatid or Acephalocyst. 1902 Daily Chron. 29 Nov. 8/4 The sketch suggests the round pill-box hat. 1910 Daily Chron. 18 Apr. 1/7 It is much greater fun to wear the B.-P. hat of the scout than the neat ‘pill-box’ cap of the Church Lads' Brigade. 1964 Mrs. L. B. Johnson White House Diary 10 Mar. (1970) 82 Archbishop Iakovos..dressed in long, black clerical garb..and the black pillbox hat from which flowed long black veils. 1974 Country Life 3–10 Jan. 54/3 That badge of 1960s elegance, the Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat. |