Word.ws English Dictionary

out-of-the-box

out-of-the-box is the alternative form of out of the box.

Meaning of out of the box

Prepositional phrase

  1. Of a product, immediately, without intervention from the customer.
    • This software has to work out of the box, without any fancy installation.
    Synonyms:
    off the shelf
  2. (figuratively) Outside the box; unconventionally: outside the limits of conventional thinking.
    • He started out with the rather obvious alternative of talking to Junior; Hesh’s scheme was more imaginative; and Tony’s idea of torching the restaurant really is out of the box.2004, Deborrah Himsel, Leadership Sopranos Style: How to Become a More Effective Boss, Kaplan Publishing, →ISBN, page 135
    Synonyms:
    laterally, outside the box, outside of the box, OOTB
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: See out of, the, box.

Questions about out-of-the-box

What is out-of-the-box the alternative form of?
Out-of-the-box is the alternative form of out of the box.

Words near out-of-the-box in the dictionary

  1. out-of-stater
  2. out-of-staters
  3. out-of-the-body
  4. out-of-the-body experience
  5. out-of-the-body experiences
  6. out-of-the-box
  7. out-of-the-way
  8. out-of-time
  9. out-of-town
  10. out-of-towner
  11. out-of-towners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out-of-the-box (page history and authors); out of the box (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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Cite this entry: “out-of-the-box.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/out-of-the-box. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.