Word.ws English Dictionary

hotbox

hotbox noun: a container maintained at elevated temperatures in order to heat or cook its contents.

Noun

hotbox (plural hotboxes)

  1. A container maintained at elevated temperatures in order to heat or cook its contents.
    • We made a hundred pizzas with a variety of toppings and put them in hotboxes — portable sterno heaters.1986, Tom Monaghan, Robert Anderson, Pizza Tiger, page 135
    • 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 .2008, Robert Zipplies, Bending the Curve: Your Guide to Tackling Climate Change in South Africa, page 262
    1. An oven.
  2. An overheated shaft bearing.
    • 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.1972, Richard Johnson, Railroad Technology and Manpower in the 1970's, page 31
    1. An overheated axle box, bearing and bearing enclosure.
      • 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.1961 March, “Motive Power Miscellany”, in Trains Illustrated, page 181
      • In particular, hot boxes on freight trains are a persistent problem.1963 July, “News and Comment: Roller bearings for freight stock”, in Modern Railways, page 6
  3. A room or compartment that is kept artificially warm for some purpose.
    • 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.1964, Andrzej Doberczak, St Dowgielewicz, Witold Żurek, Cotton, Bast, and Wool Fibers, page 448
    • 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, Designing & Building Your Own House Your Own Way, page 62
    1. A cold frame containing compost that provides a limited amount of warmth.
      • Near-synonym: hotbed
      • You can take what you want from these two hotboxes, because I'm only going to throw them out as manure.2006, The Memoirs of John Tomczyk, Among Unknown Hostages, page 97
    2. A box for hot composting.
      • I have two Hotboxes for composting garden and kitchen waste.2021, Alys Fowler, Eat What You Grow
    3. An incubator.
      • 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...2013, Jan Murray, Twins & More, page 78
  4. A room or house that becomes unbearably hot inside when the weather is hot.
    • With portholes and doors secured, the staterooms became hotboxes and the odor from the galley an unendurable stench.1997, Charles Patrick Weiland, Above and Beyond, page 22
    • To keep from becoming hotboxes, birdhouses need good ventilation.1999, Mary Twitchell, Easy-to-Build Birdhouses
  5. A small, hot, enclosure, used as a punishment for slaves or prisoners.
    • In recent years, it had been believed that hotboxes only existed in movies such as Cool Hand Luke and Bridge Over The River Kwai.1980, Jet - Volume 59, Issues 1-13, page 15
    • I must dress and go see what's going on with the slaves in the hotboxes.2019, Holly A. Kellison, When the Heart Is a Stranger
  6. A furnace or heat source for a building.
    • 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.1974, United States. Congress. House. Science and Astronautics Committee, Solar Photovoltaic Energy, page 13
    • When combined, these three DIY “hotboxes“ introduce enough hot air into this home to carry 30 to 40 percent of the home heating load.2017, Editors of Cool Springs Press, Step-by-Step Projects for Self-Sufficiency, page 255
  7. A small, airtight space where people smoke marijuana in order to intensify the high.
    • The blackouts, the hangovers, the vomiting, the hotboxes, the detox, the shame, and the degradation.2012, Maxine Thompson, L..A. Blues II
  8. A gas manifold that diverts hot gasses into a heat exchanger.
    • 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.1957, United States. Congress. Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Hearings and Reports on Atomic Energy - Volume 18, page 101
    • But we certainly have looked at heat transfer, both in hotboxes and the static circumstances.1982, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Science and Technology. Subcommittee on Energy Development and Applications, Building Energy Research, page 26
  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.
    • 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.1966, Manoogian, Film-makers Art, page 23
    • 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.1970, Verne Carlson, Sylvia Carlson, Professional 16/35mm Cameraman's Handbook, page 34
  10. A storage container for personal belongings of employees who are hot desking.
    • 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.2020, Darren McCabe, Changing Change Management: Strategy, Power and Resistance
  11. A location where controversial ideas are discussed or practiced.
    • CMA's "hotboxes" give sources a chance to role-play before they face a real interview .1987, Peter M. Sandman, David B. Sachsman, Michael R. Greenberg, The Environmental News Source, page 26
    • In this way, these off-campus, nonprofit, nonacademic clubs increasingly influence the culture of colleges and universities nationwide, turning them into lockstep ideological hotboxes.2023, Stanley K. Ridgley, Brutal Minds
  12. (slang) A sexy woman.
    • 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.1989, Howard Adams, Prison of Grass: Canada from a Native Point of View, page 38
  13. A context-sensitive dialog that duplicates many of the commands on the menu for users of the Maya Embedded Language.
    • 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 .2000, Perry Harovas, John L. Kundert-Gibbs, Peter Lee, Mastering Maya Complete 2 - Volume 1, page 63
    • Another way to easily access menus is by using the hotbox, which appears when you press the spacebar.2006, George Maestri, Maya 8 at a Glance, page 4

Verb

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

  1. (slang, transitive) 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.
  4. (slang) To fart in a small confined area, such as the inside of a car.

Examples of hotbox in a sentence

  • 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.2010, William Trevor, The Children Of Dynmouth:
  • 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.2013, Jeremy Shere, Renewable: The World-Changing Power of Alternative Energy, page 102:
  • A hotbox is a wonderful way to slow-cook your food.2016, Sally Andrew, Tannie Maria & the Satanic Mechanic:
  • As I looked around the living room, there were 2 hotboxes and a kadai covered with an aluminium plate kept at the coffee table.2021, Yashas Ramesh, The Love Research, page 133:

Synonyms of hotbox

Forms of hotbox

Noun
pluralhotboxes
Verb
third-person singular presenthotboxes
present participlehotboxing
past participlehotboxed
pasthotboxed

Origin of hotbox

From hot + box.

Questions about hotbox

What does hotbox mean?
Hotbox means a container maintained at elevated temperatures in order to heat or cook its contents.
How do you use hotbox in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is hotbox?
Hotbox can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of hotbox?
The plural of hotbox is hotboxes.

Words near hotbox in the dictionary

  1. hotbeds
  2. hotblood
  3. hotblooded
  4. hotbloodedness
  5. hotbloods
  6. hotbox
  7. hotboxed
  8. hotboxes
  9. hotboxing
  10. hotbrain
  11. hotbrained

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hotbox (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-hot box.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-hotbox.wav.

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