pillbox

Noun

pillbox (plural pillboxes)

1. A small box in which pills are kept.
   • There is a list of possessions auctioned after her death – her pillboxes and playing cards, two silver-mounted ivory lemon-squeezers.2018 August 2, Parul Sehgal, “Beauty, bad temper and scandal in a riveting look at Princess Margaret”, in The Bellingham Herald, volume 130, number 214, Bellingham, Wash., page 15T, column 2
2. A flat, concrete gun emplacement.
   • It was reported that the Germans had established trench works in front of the pillboxes. The enemy was said to have taken refuge from American fire in the pillboxes, later emerging to take up the trench positions.1944 December 19, “Germans Stiff in Southern Reich”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, page 4
   • Beneath the wide steppe sky women in white kerchiefs were digging trenches and building small pillboxes, looking up now and again in case 'those vermin' were on the wing.2019, Vasily Grossman, translated by Robert Chandler and Yury Bit-Yunan, Stalingrad, page 226
3. (archaic, slang) A doctor's carriage.
   • The doctor generously told him where he lived in a loud and audible manner, gave him half-a-crown, and was about ascending his pill-box, after bidding him call upon him, in a day or two, when a servant in a splendid livery stepped forward from the hotel […]1838, Oasis: An Anthology to Divert an Idle Hour, volume 1, page 9
   • […] the commercial traveller cuts in and out of the line in the dog-cart that carries his samples; the doctor contrives to be seen there in his pill-box on wheels; the eminent tragedian airs himself in a buggy; […]1863, Elizabeth Caroline Grey, Good Society; Or, Contrasts of Character, page 5