Word.ws English Dictionary

put someone in a box

put someone in a box verb: to judge someone unfairly as a member of a category of person, based on very few factors.

Verb

put someone in a box (third-person singular simple present puts someone in a box, present participle putting someone in a box, simple past and past participle put someone in a box)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To judge someone unfairly as a member of a category of person, based on very few factors.
    Synonyms:
    pigeonhole

Synonyms of put someone in a box

Forms of put someone in a box

third-person singular presentputs someone in a box
present participleputting someone in a box
past participleput someone in a box
pastput someone in a box

Questions about put someone in a box

What does put someone in a box mean?
Put someone in a box means to judge someone unfairly as a member of a category of person, based on very few factors.
What part of speech is put someone in a box?
Put someone in a box is a verb.
What is the past tense of put someone in a box?
The past tense of put someone in a box is put someone in a box.

Words near put someone in a box in the dictionary

  1. put right
  2. put round
  3. put salt on someone's tail
  4. put some timber on
  5. put someone hip
  6. put someone in a box
  7. put someone in a false position
  8. put someone in hospital
  9. put someone in mind of
  10. put someone in their place
  11. put someone on blast

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put someone in a 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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