box office
UK/ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs//ˈbɑksˌɑfɪs/
box office noun: a place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema.
Noun
box office (countable and uncountable, plural box offices)
- A place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema.
- The movie tanked at the box office.
- The total amount of money paid by people worldwide to watch a movie at cinemas/movie theaters.
- box office receipts
- If any further insurance was required, the popularity of the three "Topper" films in the 1930s — based on Thorne Smith's characters — would seem to indicate that amusing ghosts made good box office.2005, Barry Day, Coward on Film: The Cinema of Noël Coward, page 88
- Quality of an entertainment or spectacle that makes it very popular with the public, or likely to be so.
- His performance last night was pure box office.
- A show that makes great box office.
box office meaning in Tamil, Tagalog and Vietnamese
box office in Tamil
- திரைப்பட நுழைவு சீட்டு விற்பனையகம், சீட்டுக்கூண்டு
box office in Tagalog
- ticket office
- takilya
box office in Vietnamese
- ticket office
- phòng vé
Forms of box office
| plural | box offices |
|---|---|
| alternative form | box-office |
| alternative form | boxoffice |
Origin of box office
1786, presumably from sales of boxes, box seats (“separated private seating”). Sense of “total sales” from 1904. Folk etymology is that this derives from Elizabethan theatre, where theater admission was collected in a box attached to a long stick, passed around the audience. However, the term is first attested over a century later (theaters were closed in 1642), making this highly unlikely.
Words formed from box office
Questions about box office
- What does box office mean?
- Box office means a place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema.
- What is box office in Tamil?
- Box office in Tamil is திரைப்பட நுழைவு சீட்டு விற்பனையகம், சீட்டுக்கூண்டு. See Box office meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is box office?
- Box office is a noun.
- How do you pronounce box office?
- Box office is pronounced /ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of box office?
- The plural of box office is box offices.
Words near box office in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: box office (page history and authors); box office (Tamil Wiktionary) (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)-Persent101-box office.wav.
Cite this entry: “box office.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/box_office. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.