Word.ws English Dictionary

tinderbox

tinderbox noun: a small container containing flint, steel, and tinder (dry, finely-divided fibrous matter), once used to help kindle a fire.

tinderbox: a small container containing flint, steel, and tinder (dry, finely-divided fibrous matter), once...
Image: Timpsk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tinderbox (plural tinderboxes)

  1. (historical) A small container containing flint, steel, and tinder (dry, finely-divided fibrous matter), once used to help kindle a fire.
    • Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 1: Telemachus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], pages 19–20
    • Just bring me the old tinderbox that my grandmother forgot the last time she went down there.2007, Stephen Mitchell, The Tinderbox, page 5
  2. (broadly) A place that is so dry and hot that there is danger of fire.
    • And then came the night that made America famous / Was it carelessness or someone's sick idea of a joke? / In the tinderbox trap that we hippies lived in, someone struck a spark1974, Harry Chapin, “What Made America Famous”, in Verities & Balderdash
    • Think of your blank journal as a tinderbox, a box for holding combustible materials, ready to catch fire when you sit down to work.2010, L. K. Ludwig, Creative Wildfire: An Introduction to Art Journaling, page 30
  3. (figuratively) A potentially dangerous situation.
    • This act was the "match that ignited the great tinderbox of fuel" that had been building for years between many of the countries in Europe.2010, H. S. Haskell, Sagebrush Or Gold Dust, page 291

Proper noun capitalized: Tinderbox

Tinderbox

  1. A suburb of Kingborough council area, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

tinderbox meaning in Myanmar

tinderbox in Myanmar

small container containing flint, steel, and tinder
မီးခတ် mi:hkat

Synonyms of tinderbox

Forms of tinderbox

pluraltinderboxes
alternative formtinder-box
alternative formtinder box

Origin of tinderbox

From tinder + box, first use appears c. 1530, in the writings of John Palsgrave.

Words formed from tinderbox

Questions about tinderbox

What does tinderbox mean?
Tinderbox means a small container containing flint, steel, and tinder (dry, finely-divided fibrous matter), once used to help kindle a fire.
What is tinderbox in Myanmar?
Tinderbox in Myanmar is မီးခတ် (mi:hkat). See Tinderbox meaning in Myanmar.
What part of speech is tinderbox?
Tinderbox can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of tinderbox?
The plural of tinderbox is tinderboxes.

Words near tinderbox in the dictionary

  1. tinder
  2. tinder box
  3. tinder fungus
  4. tinder-box
  5. tinder-boxes
  6. tinderbox
  7. tinderboxes
  8. tindered
  9. Tinderella
  10. Tinderellas
  11. Tinderer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tinderbox (page history and authors); Tinderbox (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Knabrupt-tinderbox.wav.

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