Word.ws English Dictionary

boxcar

boxcar noun: an enclosed railway goods wagon, typically with a sliding door.

boxcar: an enclosed railway goods wagon, typically with a sliding door
Image: South Australian Railways official photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

boxcar (plural boxcars)

  1. (US) An enclosed railway goods wagon, typically with a sliding door.
    • The locomotive pulled one single car, a dilapidated boxcar missing numerous planks in its walls.2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 83

Verb

boxcar (third-person singular simple present boxcars, present participle boxcarring, simple past and past participle boxcarred)

  1. (transitive) To reduce to a boxcar function.

Adjective

boxcar (comparative more boxcar, superlative most boxcar)

  1. Extremely large.

Noun (2)

boxcar (plural boxcars)

  1. (attributive) A type of atrophic acne scar that forms a broad, box-like depression on the skin.

Synonyms of boxcar

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of boxcar

Forms of boxcar

Noun
pluralboxcars
alternative formbox car
alternative formbox-car
Verb
third-person singular presentboxcars
present participleboxcarring
past participleboxcarred
pastboxcarred
Adjective
comparativemore boxcar
superlativemost boxcar

Origin of boxcar

From box + car.

Words formed from boxcar

Phrases with boxcar

Questions about boxcar

What does boxcar mean?
Boxcar means an enclosed railway goods wagon, typically with a sliding door.
What part of speech is boxcar?
Boxcar can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
What is the plural of boxcar?
The plural of boxcar is boxcars.

Words near boxcar in the dictionary

  1. boxboard
  2. boxboards
  3. Boxborough
  4. boxcab
  5. boxcabs
  6. boxcar
  7. boxcar function
  8. boxcar functions
  9. boxcarred
  10. boxcarring
  11. boxcars

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boxcar (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)-Wodencafe-boxcar.wav.

Cite this entry: “boxcar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boxcar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.