beatbox
/ˈbiːt.bɑks/
beatbox noun: a type of electronic percussion device.
Noun
beatbox (plural beatboxes)
- A type of electronic percussion device.
- Self-styled 'black gentleman vampire' who followed his cousin in to hip-hop by rapping in front of a beatbox for his first shows on Long Island, New York.1992, Colin Larkin, The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Guinness, →ISBN, page 1340
- But by 1980 Fenley had collaborated with Mark Freedman on the high-energy, repetitive sound score for Energizer by manipulating a beatbox, the omnipresent instrument of late disco music.1994, Sally Banes, Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism, Wesleyan University Press, →ISBN, page 322
Verb
beatbox (third-person singular simple present beatboxes, present participle beatboxing, simple past and past participle beatboxed)
- To use one’s mouth, lips, tongue, voice, etc. as a percussive instrument to create beats and rhythms for music.
- Hell, why do so many of us still breakdance? Why do so many of us still beatbox? The two most successful rappers to come out of Chicago, Common Sense and The Brat, had nothing to do with the city-wide hip-hop scene.2001, William Upski Wimsatt, Bomb the Suburbs, Soft Skull Press, →ISBN, page 69
- Before you knew it, everyone, everywhere, was trying to copy Fresh's technique, and every rapper on the planet seemed intent on proving they could beatbox (with varying, occasionally embarrassing degrees of success).2004, Neil Kulkarni, Hip Hop: Bring the Noise: The Stories Behind the Biggest Songs, Thunder's Mouth Press, →ISBN, page 43
Examples of beatbox in a sentence
- Hip-hop took the language and made it graffiti—it was music video on a wall with a beatbox blowing its subwoofers next to it.2004, Ed Gaskell, Make Your Own Music Video, CMP, →ISBN, page 26:
- Turull, group elder, and Wright, the youngest, play off each other extraordinarily well, be it on cajon or when the latter jumps up to beatbox against Marina’s lyrical sidesteps.2005, Derek Beres, Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 102:
Forms of beatbox
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | beatboxes |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | beatboxes |
| present participle | beatboxing |
| past participle | beatboxed |
| past | beatboxed |
Origin of beatbox
From beat + box.
Words formed from beatbox
Questions about beatbox
- What does beatbox mean?
- Beatbox means a type of electronic percussion device.
- How do you use beatbox in a sentence?
- Hip-hop took the language and made it graffiti—it was music video on a wall with a beatbox blowing its subwoofers next to it.
- What part of speech is beatbox?
- Beatbox can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce beatbox?
- Beatbox is pronounced /ˈbiːt.bɑks/.
- What is the plural of beatbox?
- The plural of beatbox is beatboxes.
Words near beatbox in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: beatbox (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-beatbox.wav.
Cite this entry: “beatbox.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beatbox. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.