bidon

Borrowed from French bidon (“can, canister, tin”), from Middle French bidon (“small sealed portable container made of metal or wood”), from Old Norse *biða (“container, vessel”), from Proto-Germanic *bidōn, *bidjan (“tub, vat; vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰidʰ- (“barrel; bucket; pot”), from *bʰeydʰ- (“to bind; to weave”).

der

I saw that she had picked up an empty oil bidon that had been lying in the corner. I had bought it weeks before, for an oil lamp I had before I sold my things. […] They always make you pay a deposit on the bidon, and you get it back when the bidon is returned. But I'd forgotten all about it. […] She grabbed the bidon and went clattering down the stairs like a herd of elephants, and in three minutes she was back with two pounds of bread under one arm and a half-litre bottle of wine under the other.

1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XV, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, pages 115–116:

(archaic) A container for holding a liquid.

A container for holding a liquid.
An oil drum; a petrol can.


letterbox

en-verb

letterbox (third-person singular simple present letterboxes, present participle letterboxing, simple past and past participle letterboxed)

letterboxes (present singular third-person)
letterboxing (participle present)
letterboxed (participle past)
letterboxed (past)
letter box (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-letterbox.wav

(transitive, intransitive) To hunt for letterboxes (containers with logbook and rubber stamp) by following clues.


eggcup

From egg + cup. Compare Swedish äggkopp.

A small dish used to support a boiled egg while it is eaten.

dalc'her-vioù

a small dish used to support a boiled egg while it is eaten


reliquary

/ˈɹɛlɪkwɛɹi/

/ˈɹɛlɪkwəɹi/

Borrowed from Middle French reliquaire (modern French reliquaire), from Late Latin reliquiarium, from rēliquia (“a relic”) (English relic), noun use of reliquus (“abandoned, left behind, relict”), from relinquō (“I relinquish”), from re- (“again”) and linquō (“I leave”), from Proto-Indo-European *leikʷ-.


breadbasket

breadbaskets (plural)
bread basket (alternative)
bread-basket (alternative)

[I]t is worth noting that if global warming produces a migration of the earth's breadbaskets, then it might damage one country's agriculture, while benefiting another's.

1990, Joshua M. Epstein, Raj Gupta, Controlling the Greenhouse Effect: Five Global Regimes Compared (Brookings Occasional Papers), Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, →ISBN, page 7:

Canada at the turn of the century had become the breadbasket of the British Empire and industrialised Europe and wheat grown on the prairies was consolidated in elevator at Fort William, Ontario to await shipment overseas.

1997, Peter Pigott, “C. D. Howe: Mister Trans-Canada Airlines”, in Flying Canucks II: Pioneers of Canadian Aviation, Toronto, Ont., Headington, Oxford: Hounslow Press, →ISBN, pages 71–72:

(agriculture) A region which has favourable conditions to produce a large quantity of grain or, by extension, other food products; a food bowl.


pannier

From Middle English panere, panȝere, panyere, from Old French panier, paniere, from Latin pānārium (“a bread basket”), from pānis (“bread”). Doublet of panary.

Until 1785 the slates were conveyed from the quarries to the port in panniers on the backs of horses, but in that year Lord Penrhyn built a good road from the quarry to the village of Llandegai (on the Chester and Holyhead road) and also continued it in the opposite direction a further nine miles to Capel Curig; […].

1945 May and June, Charles E. Lee, “The Penrhyn Railway and its Locomotives—1”, in Railway Magazine, page 138:

Pannier literally means carrying bags slung over the back of a beast of burden — in other words, saddle bags. Front and rear bicycle touring panniers, after being attached to their carrying racks on the bicycle, become the bicycle tourist's packbags.

A donkey whose talent for burdens was wondrous, So much that you'd swear he rejoiced in a load, One day had to jog under panniers so ponderous, That — down the poor Donkey fell smack on the road! His owners and drivers stood round in[…]

2016 October 28, Thomas Moore, Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Moore (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series), Delphi Classics, →ISBN, →OCLC:

A large basket or bag fastened, usually in pairs, to the back of a bicycle or pack animal, or carried in pairs over the shoulders.

شواري

large basket or bag fastened to the back of a bicycle or pack animal


dugout

The key unit of life here is the dugout – what the soldiers call a ‘blindage’ – an underground burrow where half a dozen men share the narrow space between the bunks with weapons, ammunition, biscuits, tea bags, and a jumble of other essentials (there is also usually a cat, not to mention the mice).

2017 January 14, Roland Oliphant, “Special report: Loose cannons at the frontline of Ukraine's forgotten war”, in The Telegraph:

(military) A pit dug into the ground as a shelter, especially from enemy fire.


keister

keisters (plural)
keester (alternative)
keyster (alternative)
kiester (alternative)

Uncertain. Originally attested as a criminal cant word for "burglar's tool-box" in 1881. In the 20th century a clutch of criminal slang meanings are mentioned, including "safe, strongbox". "Tripe and keister" had been the phrase for a conman's or a pitchman's display case on a tripod. A likely origin is the word Kiste, which means a box or case, in both German and Yiddish.


fish tank

I sprinkled little flakes into the fish tank for the guppies to eat.

A container, usually made out of glass or acrylic, specifically designed for holding water and marine life.

魚缸 /鱼缸

container designed for holding water and marine life


ampoule

ampoules (plural)
ampul (alternative)
ampule (alternative)

Borrowed from French ampoule. Etymologically equivalent to amphora + -ule/-le.

A small hermetically sealed vial, often used to contain a sterile solution suitable for injection.


trug

(chiefly British) A shallow, oval basket used for gardening


hotbox

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:

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. And it saves lots of electricity too.

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. By the time I walked towards the hotboxes to check what's inside, Rashmi came outside from the kitchen.

2021, Yashas Ramesh, The Love Research, page 133:

Eager 'fang farriers' hurried forward to scrape the bottoms of the hotboxes and dixies of everything that was left.

2022, Chris Pratt, Four Brothers in the Pacific War:

A container maintained at elevated temperatures in order to heat or cook its contents.

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:

Experience with infrared hotbox detector installations has demonstrated the validity of the analysis.

1964, RSC, Railway Signaling and Communications - Volume 57, page 18:

(engineering) An overheated shaft bearing.

(rail transport) An overheated axle box, bearing and bearing enclosure.

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:

The features available in the hotbox further depend on the type of the object that is under the cursor when the hotbox is invoked.

2012, Kang Zhang, Software Visualization: From Theory to Practice, page 122:

graphical user interface
graphical user interface

(graphical user interface) A context-sensitive dialog that duplicates many of the commands on the menu for users of the Maya Embedded Language.


stemware

en-noun

stemware (usually uncountable, plural stemwares)

Selected nonheat-resistant and nonheat-tempered tableware and kitchenware: […] Tableware: […] Machine-made tumblers, goblets and other stemware

1947, “No. 957.—Pressed and Blown Glassware—Quantity and Value of Shipments: 1945 [table]”, in Morris H[oward] Hansen, compiler, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1947, 68th edition, Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Commerce, →OCLC, page 861:

[T]he stemware and glassware fragments were recovered from a brick walkway uncovered at a depth of 60 cm, located 30 cm west of the house foundation. The stemwares could have been broken while being transported to or from the house or they could be casualties of entertaining.

1990, Douglas V. Armstrong, “Artifacts: Reflections of Past Lifeways”, in The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation, St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica (Blacks in the New World), Urbana, Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, page 202:

Glancing around at the tables, I noticed they were still perfectly set the way Pierre left them: linen birds of paradise atop each plate, salt and pepper shakers, stemware and flatware, all arranged with precision.

2013, Lisa Patton, Southern as a Second Language: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Dunne Books, →ISBN:

Drinking glasses that have a stem, such as wine glasses or champagne flutes.


zeer

Cholera is in the majority of cases a water-borne disease, due to water having become Cholera-contaminated [...] Water from zeers and goulahs should be looked upon with suspicion unless these are carefully watched and cleaned.

1908, Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories, Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum v. 3, 1908 suppl:

Before leaving Khartoum the bilge water in the various sections should be oiled by pouring petroleum on the surface [...] collections will harbour mosquito larvae, and attention should therefore be paid to the water-closet cisterns, zeers and tanks.

1910, Sir Ronald Ross, The Prevention of Malaria, page 535:


canister

desctree

→ German: Kanister
→ Ladin: canister
→ Polish: kanister
→ Romanian: canistră

→ Irish: ceanastar

From Middle English canustyr (“basket”), a borrowing from Latin canistrum. Doublet of canaster and knaster.
* (metal receptacle): Through influence of unrelated can.
* (projectile): Short for canister shot, so called for its casing.

Caunt let fly left and right, but Bendy ducked his canister, and got down with more caution than gallantry.

1897, R. G. Allanson-Winn, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, Boxing, page 225:

(boxing, slang, archaic) A person's head.


briefcase

briefcases (plural)
brief case (alternative dated)

You create a briefcase called Files where you store all your important documents. The briefcase is stored on your Tablet PC's C: drive, and the source files reside on your server.

2004, Craig Forrest Mathews, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Tablet PCs, page 202:

(computing) In Microsoft Windows, a folder that supports file synchronization between itself and another folder.


dumpster

Genericized brand name, from blend of dump + Dempster. The original brand (and some associated things) are no longer trademarked, because the three trademarks involved have either expired or been cancelled. By surface analysis, dump + -ster.

He realized with a brief shudder that Kurt probably used this flashlight while nipple-deep in dumpsters, had an image of Kurt transferring it from his gloved hands to his mouth and back again as he dug through bags of kitchen and toilet waste, looking for discarded technology.

2005, Cory Doctorow, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town:

[…]with the uncanny ability to always look like he just woke up in a dumpster

2020 December 27, Dave Barry, “Dave Barry's Year in Review 2020”, in The Washington Post Magazine:

(Canada, US) A large, usually metal trash receptacle designed to be hoisted up by a garbage truck in order to be emptied.


money belt

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-money belt.wav

A belt concealed under clothing, having a pocket for money or documents.


pottle

From Middle English potell, potel, from Old French potel, diminutive of pot; see more at pot.

Outside, I ripped open the bag to reveal the chips were sitting inside a paper pottle. A pottle!

2019, Tara Ward, “The Spinoff Reviews New Zealand #94: Ōkato’s award-winning hot chips”, in The Spinoff:

Did you know that the six and four-pack pottle yogurts – the kind we buy for lunches – can’t be recycled.

2023, Sarah Heeringa, “There's something to know about this yogurt – and it's not what you think”, in Stuff:

In recent weeks, he’s been taken aback by the price of the fresh fruit and vegetables they use for their pottles of raw fish.

2022, Charlotte Muru-Lanning, “What rising supply costs mean for local fish and chip shops”, in The Spinoff:

(New Zealand) A small food container, usually made of plastic or cardboard, typically used for containing hot chips, yoghurt or other foodstuffs.


pyxis

From Latin pyxis (“small box”). Doublet of box, piseog, and pyx.

(Christianity) The box in which ashes are stored for Ash Wednesday.


canopic jar

From Latin Canōpicus, from Canopus + -icus.

Had Radulph Tubbs such luck with tombs it is probable that he […] would have uncovered only the four canopic jars containing, respectively, the large intestines, small intestines, heart, and liver.

1993, Rikki Ducornet, The Jade Cabinet, Dalkey Archive Press, page 120:

(archaeology) An Egyptian pottery container in which the entrails of a mummy have been placed.


inkhorn

/ˈɪŋkˌhɔː(ɹ)n/

From Middle English ynkhorn, inkehorn (“small portable vessel, originally made of horn, used to hold ink”), equivalent to ink + horn. Displaced Old English blæchorn, which had the same literal meaning but with the native term for "ink."

Goe good partner, goe get you to Francis Seacole, bid him bring his pen and inkehorne to the Gaole: we are now to examine thoſe men.

1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v], page 113, column 2:

[…]and one man among them was clothed with linnen, with a writers inkehorne by his side, and they went in and stood beside the brasen altar.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 9:2:

Men in helmets have divided that, with swords; men in wigs, with quill and inkhorn, to divide it: and even more hateful these latter, if more peaceably; for the wig-method is at once irresistibler and baser.

1837, Thomas Carlyle, chapter V, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume I (The Bastille), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book III (The Parliament of Paris), page 85:

[…] from his pocket the notary drew his papers and inkhorn,
Wrote with a steady hand the date and the age of the parties,

1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, page 44:

“All right,” said Haley, his face beaming with delight; and pulling out an old inkhorn, he proceeded to fill out a bill of sale, which, in a few moments, he handed to the young man.

1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter XIV, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume I, Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852, →OCLC, page 219:

When a man of the theatre stirs his inkhorn he is frequently tempted to write a play about the theatre.

1934 October 21, Brooks Atkinson, “Grounding a Mortal Coil”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

(archaic) A small portable container, often made of horn, used to carry ink.


salt cellar

salt cellars (plural)
saltcellar (alternative)
salt-cellar (alternative)

From salt + cellar, from 15th Century Middle English saler, from Middle French salier, from Latin salārius (“relating to salt”), from Latin sāl (“salt”). Modified based on originally unrelated English cellar.

(UK) Synonym of salt shaker (“a closed container with perforated lid for sprinkling salt”).


canteen

desc

Cantonese: can (ken⁶, ken⁶⁻², “canteen; cafeteria; restaurant”)

Borrowed from French cantine, itself borrowed from Italian cantina. Doublet of cantina.

A small cafeteria or snack bar, especially one in a military establishment, school, or place of work.

(Hong Kong, India, Malaysia) A cafeteria in a school or place of work.

Yeah, I worked that bitch. She was buying me all the canteen I wanted.

1984 December 29, Mykki Balduff, “Prisons and Roles”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 25, page 6:

“Well, le’me give you some advice,” he continued. “If someone offers you some canteen, don’t take it.”
I instinctively knew what he was warning me against. But I felt slightly disrespected because it wasn’t as if I were a frail young girl who might go out on a date with someone and feel obligated to have sex because the guy had bought me a Happy Meal. The way I saw it, if someone wanted to give me some canteen, I was getting something for nothing!

2015 November 23, Melvin L. Boone, “Dark Corners”, in Pen America:

Administrative Confinement, sort of like a jail inside the prison, this is for those waiting on disciplinary court for a violation, or under investigation, plus other things. 2 man cells, allowed your tablets, some property, some canteen including food, reading books. 4 hours outside exercise weekly after 30 days.

2024 September 11, Jordangander, “More about solitary: I get conflicting results when I look up what modern solitary is like...?”, in r/Prison:

A box with compartments for storing eating utensils, silverware etc.

Come, stack arms, Men! Pile on the rails; stir up the campfire bright; no matter if the canteen fails, we'll make a roaring night. Here Shenandoah brawls along, there burly Blue Ridge echoes strong, to swell the Brigade's rousing song, of “Stonewall Jackson’s Way.”

1862, John Williamson Palmer, Stonewall Jackson's Way

A water bottle, flask, or other vessel, typically used by a soldier or camper as a bottle for carrying water or liquor for drink


pocketbook

pocketbooks (plural)
pocket-book (alternative)
pocket book (alternative)

→ Gulf Arabic: بوك (būk, “wallet”)

→ Najdi Arabic: بوك (būk, “wallet”)

1610s, from pocket + book, popularized in its sense as a paperback by the success of Pocket Books in the United States after its 1939 launch.

(uncommon) A small book, particularly (US) a paperback or (UK) notebook able to fit into a pocket (of any genre, from reference work to fine art).

(Philippines, by extension) A romance novel published as a small paperback.


tea-urn

But as I continued to advance, the noise increased, and became like the hissing of an enormous tea-urn.

An urn or pot, with a gravity-fed tap at the bottom, used to hold hot water, hot tea or hot coffee.

茶炊

urn or pot for holding hot water, tea or coffee


skep

Late Old English sceppe, from Old Norse skeppa (“basket”). Cognate with Danish skæppe (“an old Danish unit of measure equalling 17.4 l”).

Old women crouched over bags of Siamese rice, skeps of red and green peppers, purple egg-plants, bristly rambutans, pineapples, durians.

1956, Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 115:


chemical reactor

en-noun

chemical reactor (plural chemical reactors)

Any vessel designed to hold the compounds involved in a chemical reaction; a reaction vessel


stoup

stoups (plural)
stoop (alternative)
stowp (alternative)

From Old Norse staup, from Proto-Germanic *staupo- (whence Old English stēap). See stoop (“a vessel”). More at stop.

Fetch me a stoup of liquor.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

Set me the Stopes of wine vpon that Table.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:

…we ran up stairs together without speaking, and were instantly in the apartment I had left, where a stoup of wine still stood untasted.

1824, James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Oxford, published 2010, page 57:

(archaic) A mug or other drinking vessel.


tumbril

tumbrils (plural)
tumbrel (alternative)
tumbrill (alternative)

From Old French tumberel (modern French tombereau, in Anglo-Latin tumberellus), from tomber, tumber (“to fall”).

(historical) A kind of medieval torture device, later associated with a ducking stool.


cruet

cruets (plural)
crewet (alternative obsolete)

From Middle English, from Anglo-Norman cruet, diminutive of Old French crue (“an earthen pot”), from Old Saxon krūka.

He[…]even had a second slice of lamb, for he was hungry. During the meal, as was his custom, he read from a book propped up against the cruet.

1931, Francis Beeding, “1/1”, in Death Walks in Eastrepps:


kenning

unknown

Origin unknown

In the hall. One large table, with frame. 10s. ij cobbordes 8s. j fourme, j chaire, and j kenninge measure, 12d.

1585–1586 January 18, “LXIII. Testamentum Johannis Ogle. [63. Will of John Ogle.]”, in [William Greenwell], editor, Wills and Inventories from the Registry at Durham. Part II (The Publications of the Surtees Society; XXXVIII), Durham: Published for the Society by George Andrews, Durham; London: Whittaker and Co., 13 Ave Maria Lane; T. and W. Boone, 29 New Bond Street; Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, published 1860, →OCLC, page 132:

He called one day at Mr. Hepple's, of Needless Hall, in a forlorn condition, seeking his seed (a present of corn given at seed-time). […] After this conversation, Mr. Hepple served him with a kenning of oats, which was a much greater quantity than he usually gave on such occasions.

1828, chapter XXX, in E. Mackenzie, editor, compiled by James Thompson, A New, Improved, and Authentic Life of James Allan, the Celebrated Northumberland Piper; Detailing His Surprising Adventures in Various Parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, including a Complete Description of the Manners and Customs of the Gipsy Tribes. Collected from Sources of Genuine Authority, by James Thompson, with Explanatory Notes by E. Mackenzie, …, Newcastle upon Tyne: Printed and published by Mackenzie and Dent, St. Nicholas' Church-yard [...], →OCLC, page 460:

(Northern England) A dry measure equivalent to half a bushel; a container with that capacity.


carrier bag

carrier bags (plural)
carrierbag (alternative)

“Something for everybody!” Gerald Fedden said, striding into the kitchen with a rattling brown-paper carrier bag.

2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 2, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN:

(UK) A bag made of thin polythene or paper, generally used for carrying groceries or other purchased items.


cruse

cruses (plural)
cruise (alternative)
cruze (alternative rare)

From Middle English crouse, from Old English crūse (“jar, cruse”), from Proto-West Germanic *krūsā, from Proto-Germanic *krūsǭ, *krūsaz (“jar, pot, collar, jug”). Cognate with German Krause (“pot with a lid”), Icelandic krús (“jar, jug”). Merged with Middle English croo (“pot, pitcher”), from Old English crōg (“crock, pitcher, vessel”). More at crock.

inh

With a thought I tooke for Maudline
& a cruse of cockle pottage.
with a thing thus tall, skie blesse you all:
I befell into this dotage.

c. 1620, anonymous, “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” in Giles Earle his Booke (British Museum, Additional MSS. 24, 665)

He had dipped ungenerously into a generous mother’s purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse.

1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 21, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

(religion, heraldry or obsolete) A small jar used to hold liquid, such as oil or water.


dumpy

First attested in 1750; exact origin unknown. Perhaps derived from, or cognate with, dumpling, or from the noun sense of dump.

Most manufacturers have ceased making dumpies, and a number have even stopped making tilting levels, […]

2012, Raymond Paul, Walter Whyte, Basic Surveying, page 82:


billfold

Lenny had so many pictures of his family stuffed into his billfold that it barely fit into his pocket.

(US) A small, folding sleeve or case designed to hold paper currency, as well as credit cards, pictures, etc.


shoebox

In one shoebox he had a whole collection of seeds he had saved from last year.


feretory

feretories (plural)
feretry (alternative)

From Middle English feretory, fertre, feretre, et al., from Anglo-Norman fertre, from Latin feretrum (“bier, funeral litter”), from Ancient Greek φέρετρον (phéretron), from the verb φέρω (phérō, “I carry”). Doublet of feretrum.

An area of a church where relics are kept.


hatbox

A green and pink plaid hat box contains eight more hatboxes that can be stacked like a set of Russian nesting dolls.

1991 May 30, Emily Gwathmey, “Storage Box: Catchall's New Life as Eye-Catcher”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 2024-12-14:

Get a whiff of the models that served our grandfathers well: They now combine the must of a midcentury hatbox with the musk of 21st-century body spray.

2015 November 24, Troy Patterson, “The Winter Hat Trick”, in The New York Times Magazine, archived from the original on 2019-02-26:

A piece of luggage for a hat; a case or box for a hat.

hattaeskja

a piece of luggage, case, or box for a hat


laundry basket

Fortunately, Frank had devised a cool way of getting down the seemingly endless staircase. He’d found an old laundry basket, and with felt-tip pens had painted it with the colours of Queenie – red, white and blue. All he had to do was sit at the top of the staircase, and then let gravity take its course.

2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:

A container, often made of plastic, for holding and transporting clothing and household textiles, especially before and after being laundered.

洗衣籃 /洗衣篮

container for holding and transporting clothing


krater

Borrowed from Ancient Greek κρατήρ (kratḗr).

In the tondo of a cup in the Louvre we see a young slave, a pais, dip an oenochoe into a garlanded krater; he is holding a cup in the other hand and is about to serve drinks (fig. 20).” By isolating this detail, the painter implies all the aspects of a […]

2014, François Lissarrague, The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 34:

(historical) An ancient Greek vessel for mixing water and wine.


jerrycan

jerrycans (plural)
jerican (alternative)
jerrican (alternative)
jerry can (alternative)
jerry-can (alternative)

desctree

→ Dutch: jerrycan
→ Indonesian: jeriken
→ Petjo: djerriegen
→ North Moluccan Malay: jergen

→ Finnish: jerrykannu

→ French: jerricane, jerrican

→ Japanese: ジェリカン (jerikan)

→ Korean: 제리캔 (jerikaen)

desc

→ Kurtöp: ཇར་ཀན (jarkan), ཇར་ཀིན (jarkin)

→ Norwegian: jerrykanne

→ Hebrew: ג׳ריקן (jerikan)

/ˈd͡ʒɛɹiˌkæn/

/ˈd͡ʒɛɹɪˌkæn/

From Jerry (“a German”) + can, from its use by German troops in World War II.

The police fell back, swatting and cursing. At the gateway, somebody grabbed a jerrycan of water from Jonamon's hut and flung its contents at the swarm.

1987, Michael Swanwick, Vacuum Flowers, New York: Arbor House, →ISBN, page 46:

Anyone with half a brain and a jerrycan of fertilizer's got an army.

2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 259:

A robust fuel container often made from pressed steel.


ice bucket

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-ice bucket.wav

An often insulated container for holding ice cubes.


zarf

Likely from Ottoman Turkish ظرف (zarf), from Arabic ظَرْف (ẓarf).

An ornamental container designed to hold a coffee cup and insulate it from the hand of the drinker.


Moses basket

From Moses + basket, after the biblical story of Moses being placed in a basket and set afloat on the Nile (Exodus 2:1-10).

A basket for holding a newborn, a kind of bassinet designed to be set upon a stand.


horsebox

A container for transporting horses in, whether by road, rail, or sea.

On October 31 [...] Laira "Grange" No. 6871 passed through Wolverhampton with a Holyhead-Didcot horsebox special.

1960 January, “Motive Power Miscellany: Western Region”, in Trains Illustrated, page 58:

(UK, rail transport, obsolete) A van-type railway vehicle specially built for the carriage of horses.


saltbox

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-saltbox.wav

“I think I'd rather languish in the Salt Box at Newgate Prison wearing the Devil's Claws than to be married to that tree,” Kierney said.

Heather Herrman, The Corpse Queen, in 2017, Dark Screams (volume 6)

As expected, Peg was indeed cast for death and was moved to the 'salt box' (the condemned cell) in the Press-yard to be near the New Drop.

2018, Charles Palliser, The Quincunx: The Clothiers:

(UK, slang, historical) The cell in Newgate prison for a prisoner condemned to death.


monstrance

From Middle English mustraunce, from Old French mostrance, monstrance, from post-classical Latin mōnstrantia, from classical Latin mōnstrāns, present participle of mōnstrāre (“to show”).

He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins.

1891, Oscar Wilde, “Chapter 11”, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London, New York, N.Y., Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC:

Sir Oswald had done pretty well during the war out of his timber, and there had been no death duties to pay for many years, not since the old man had died. But there was no doubt that the shoe was beginning to pinch. He had been obliged to sell that Spanish monstrance in '30, or was it '31?

1935, Francis Beeding, “7/2”, in The Norwich Victims:

(Christianity) An ornamental, often precious receptacle, either open or with a transparent cover, in which the sacramental bread (consecrated host) is placed for Eucharistic adoration.

дарохранителница

ornamental receptacle in which the consecrated host is placed for Eucharistic adoration


flowerpot

flowerpots (plural)
flower pot (alternative)
flower-pot (alternative)

O Laurinella! little doſt thou wot
 How fraile a flower thou doſt ſo highly prize:
Beauty's the flower, but love the flower-pot
 That muſt preſerve it, els it quickly dyes.

1653, William Basse, “Clio, or The First Muse; in 9 Eglogues in Honor of 9 Vertues. As It was in His Dayes Intended. [Munday. Laurinella. Eglogue. Of True and Chast Love.]”, in J[ohn] P[ayne] C[ollier], editor, The Pastorals and Other Workes of William Basse. […] (Miscellaneous Tracts, Temp. Eliz. & Jac. I), [London: s.n.], published 1870, →OCLC, page 14:

I hope you will think kindly of my whitened bones, and never have anything more to do with Greek writing on flower-pots, sir, if I may make so bold as to say so.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, “Job Has a Presentiment”, in She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 247:

Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local color) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.

1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), pages 377–378:

As a multifaceted kitchen enabler, nothing can quite supplant the gorgeous, timeless, ever-available, often dirt-cheap terra-cotta flowerpot.

2002 April 19, Suzanne Hamlin, “FAVORITES; One Terra-Cotta Pot. Add Lateral Thinking”, in The New York Times:

The reason we have for so long been unaware that the universe evolves probabilistically is that for the relatively large, everyday objects we typically encounter -- baseballs, flowerpots, the Moon -- quantum mechanics shows that the probabilities become highly skewed, hugely favoring one outcome and effectively suppressing all others.

2005 April 8, Brian Greene, “One Hundred Years of Uncertainty”, in The New York Times:

A pot filled with soil in which plants are grown.


lachrymatory

/ˈlækɹɪmətəɹi/

From Latin type *lacrimatorius, from lacrimare.

1658: For beside these Lachrymatories, notable Lamps with Vessels of Oyles and Aromaticall Liquors attended noble Ossuaries. — Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial (Penguin 2005, p. 21)

(archaeology) A vase supposedly intended to hold tears; formerly used by archaeologists to designate certain urns found in Roman burials.


pepper pot

pepper pots (plural)
pepperpot (alternative)
pepper-pot (alternative)

A soup made of tripe, vegetables and dumplings, seasoned with pepper.


snuffbox

snuffboxes (plural)
snuff-box (alternative)

He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid.

1891 [September], A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Adventure III.—A Case of Identity.”, in Geo[rge] Newnes, editor, The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, volume II (July to December), number [9], London: […], page 248, column 2:

A small box or container to hold snuff or loose tobacco.


ossuary

From Late Latin ossuārium (“charnel house”), from ossuārius (“of or for bones”), from compound of Latin os (“bone”) + adjectival suffix -ārius (“of, related to”).

A container, receptacle, or building, such as an urn or vault, for holding the bones of the dead.


winnowing basket

en-noun

winnowing basket (plural winnowing baskets)

A basket used to winnow rice or grain from the chaff.


albarello

albarello (plural albarelli or albarellos)

A ceramic pharmacy or drug jar, generally majolica ware, usually tall rather than wide, and often of a waisted shape.


tazza

a pair of royal George III silver gilt tazzas

2009 June 19, Wendy Moonan, “A Trove of Steinbeck”, in New York Times:

A shallow saucer-like dish, mounted either on a stem and foot or on a foot alone.


pannikin

1852, Ellen Clacy (diarist), cited in Susan Lawrence, "Households on Australian goldfields" in Penelope M. Allison (ed.), The Archaeology of Household Activities, London: Routledge, 1999,
‘a block of wood forms a table, and this is the only furniture; many dispense with that. The bedding, which is laid on the ground, serves to sit upon. Tin plates and pannikins… compose the tea service.’

Scarcely had we got things fixed and supper under weigh, when a yell from Boteler, 'He's going to spout!' caused us to drop teapot and pannikin, and tumble out of the tent in half no time.

1876, Earl of Dunraven, The Great Divide: Travels in the Upper Yellowstone in the Summer of 1874, London: Chatto and Windus, page 265:

A stout Burmese woman, wife of a constable, was kneeling outside the cage ladling rice and watery dahl into tin pannikins.

It is all bound up in my mind with the winter cold, the ragged uniforms of militiamen, the oval Spanish faces, the morse-like tapping of machine-guns, the smells of urine and rotting bread, the tinny taste of bean-stews wolfed hurriedly out of unclean pannikins.

1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC:

The peasants and their wives came to the doors of their cottages. Some brought out pannikins of water to the fleeing Jews; others laughed and jeered.

1950, Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated by A.H. Gross, The Family Moskat, New York: Knopf, Part V, Chapter 1, p. 258:

Water was seriously rationed, and each slave was given half a pint of water served in a pannikin.

2007, Toyin Falola, Amanda Warnock, editors, Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, page 131:

A durable cup or other vessel used for drinking made of metal and coated in enamel.


eyebath

a cup-shaped vessel used to apply eyewash


safe-deposit box

safe-deposit box (plural safe-deposit boxes)

safe-deposit boxes (plural)
safe deposit box (alternative)
safety-deposit box (alternative)

A fireproof metal box, stored in a secure vault, for holding personal valuables


attaché case

attaché cases (plural)
attache case (alternative)

A box-style briefcase, scrunched over a hinged frame that opens into two compartments.


corbeille

(historical) A basket of clothing and accessories given as part of the dowry from groom to bride.


reaction vessel

reaction vessel (plural reaction vessels)

Any vessel used to contain the reactants taking part in a chemical reaction. Synonym: chemical reactor.


cresset

From Middle English cresset, from Old French crasset, cresset (“sort of lamp or torch”); perhaps of Old Dutch or Old High German origin, and akin to English cruse and/or French creuset (“crucible”), the latter being from Gallo-Roman Vulgar Latin *croceolus.

1805–1814, Dante Alighieri, Henry Francis Cary (translator), The Divine Comedy, "Inferno", Canto VIII
We reach'd the lofty turret's base, our eyes / its height ascended, where we mark'd uphung / two cressets and another saw from far

A metal cage, basket or cup with fire in it, used for various purposes:

(coopering) A small furnace or iron cage to hold fire for charring the inside of a cask, and making the staves flexible.


bandbox

bandboxes (plural)
band-box (alternative)

A small baseball park conducive to scoring home runs.


shipper

Either formed anew from ship + -er or borrowed from Middle Low German schipper; compare skipper and Old English sċipere (“sailor”). Piecewise doublet of skipper (“captain, sailor”).

piecewise doublet

The shipper should have paid for insurance on the package, because it was damaged when it arrived.

The person or organization that ships (sends) something.

изпращач

the person or organization that ships (sends) something


shipper

From a clipping of relationshipper. Relationshipper emerged in early online fandom of the television series The X-Files as a term for fans who supported the possibility of a Mulder/Scully romance. It was shortened to r'shipper, then 'shipper, and finally shipper. By surface analysis, ship (“to create a fictional romantic relationship”) + -er.

surf

For creative fans and committed 'shippers^([sic]), fanfiction continues the interaction — the dialogue, the conversation, the story […]

2013, Jennifer K. Stuller, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, page 42:

(fandom slang) A person who supports a romantic or sexual relationship between fictional characters or real people.


wannigan

From Abenaki waniigan (“pit trap, container for sundries”); compare klahigan (“wooden trap”). Compare Ojibwe waanikaan (“pit, excavated hole”) and English wammikin (also from Algonquian).

cog

A box, usually made of wood, used to store food on canoe or sledding trips.


pressure vessel

en-noun

pressure vessel (plural pressure vessels)

A container designed to maintain a volume at a significantly different pressure to that of ambient.


strongbox

From strong + box. Compare French coffre-fort.

An inroad on the strongbox, or an erasure in the ledger, or a missummation in a fitted account, could hardly have surprised him more disagreeably.

1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], Rob Roy. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:

A sturdy box with a lock, for storing valuables.


teabox

teaboxes (plural)
tea-box (alternative)
tea box (alternative)

A box for carrying or storing tea; a tea chest or tea caddy.


pencil case

I love you from the bottom of my pencil case / I love the way you never ask me why

1989, Paul Heaton, Dave Rotheray, “Song for Whoever”, performed by The Beautiful South:

An object purposed to contain different stationery like pencil, rubber, correction fluid, etc.


pencil box

A container for stationery such as pencils, pens, rubber, correction fluid, etc.


vial

From Middle English vial, viole, a variant of fiole, phiole, phial (“small bowl or cup for liquids, etc.; flask”) [and other forms]: see further at phial. Doublet of phiale.

nb...

fial, fialle, fiol, fyale, fyall, fyol, fyole, fyoll, viel, viele

Take thou this vial, being then in bed, / And this distilled liquor drink thou off.

c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:

And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 16:3:

A glass vessel or bottle, especially a small tube-shaped bottle used to store medicine, perfume or other chemicals.

أُنبوب

small tube-shaped bottle used to store a chemical

玻璃瓶 (bōlípíng, literally “glass bottle”)

藥瓶 /药瓶 (yàopíng, literally “medicine bottle”) (usually for medicine)


clothing bin

A container in which clothing is placed to be donated to charity organizations.


cheeselep

cheeseleps (plural)
cheeselip (alternative)
cheeselop (alternative)
cheeslib (alternative)
chislock (alternative)
choslip (alternative)
keeslip (alternative)

From Middle English cheslip (“rennet”), from Old English cȳslybb, cīeslybb (“rennet”), from Proto-West Germanic *kāsijalubi (literally “cheese medicine, cheese potion”). Equivalent to cheese + lib.


oilcan

A container with a long spout, for holding oil and delivering it in drops or small quantities for lubrication.


kangri

Borrowed from Kashmiri کانٛگٕر (kāngụr).

Under the phiran her little kangri of hot coals sent long fingers of heat across her stomach.

2005, Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown, Vintage, published 2006, page 54:

A small wicker-covered clay pot containing hot coals, worn under clothing in Kashmir to warm the skin.


matchbox

A small cardboard box in which matches are kept.


suggestion box

en-noun

suggestion box (plural suggestion boxes)

A receptacle with an opening into which people may place slips of paper containing suggestions for improvement, or for similar feedback.


wine cooler

Any piece of equipment used to keep wine chilled.


tallboy

tallboys (plural)
tall boy (alternative)
tall-boy (alternative)

By surface analysis, tall + boy, but the furniture sense may have been originally modeled after lowboy, related to French bois (“wood”).

(furniture) A tall chest of drawers, or combination of chest on chest, or chest with a small wardrobe on top. Usually with low bracket feet but always resulting in a tall piece of furniture.


étui

étuis (plural)
etwee (alternative)
etui (alternative)

From the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested of her home-spun garb, and dressed in the gayest style of the day; her pincushion and scissars discarded for an etwee and watch, and the tender native hue of her complexion incrusted with paint, and disguised by patches.

1791 June 1, John Ireland, “The Harlot’s Progress. Plate I.”, in Hogarth Illustrated, volume I, [London]: J[ohn] & J[osiah] Boydell […], →OCLC, pages 4–5:

Secondly, glass bottles are useless: the drugs should be stowed away in tin or wooden boxes, such as the natives of the country use, and when a phial is required, it must be fitted into an étui of some kind.

1855, Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah, Dover, published 1964, p. 26 n:

And what about that comb in a real-leather etui, what about, what about it – oh, it would get fouled up in no time and it would take an hour of work to remove the grime from between its tight teeth [...].

1972, Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things, McGraw-Hill, published 1972, page 13:

And from a buff leather etui monogrammed in silver, he extracted one of his Maria Mancinis-- a lovely specimen from the top of the box, flattened on just one side the way he especially liked it ….

1995, Thomas Mann, translated from the 1925 German by John E. Woods, "The Magic Mountain", Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, p. 46

A small, ornamental bag or rigid container used for holding articles such as needles.


water butt

water butts (plural)
water-butt (alternative)

It would have been better, as it turned out, to have led gently up to this announcement, for Mrs. Micawber, being in a delicate state of health, was overcome by it, and was taken so unwell, that Mr. Micawber was obliged, in great trepidation, to run down to the water-butt in the backyard, and draw a basinful to lave her brow with.

1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 27, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC:

The house was silent save for the wind outside, and the noisy trickling and splattering of water in the water-butts.

1915, D. H. Lawrence, chapter 2, in The Rainbow, New York: The Modern Library, page 72:

Trumpkin went to a flat stone about the size of the top of a water-butt, and stamped on it with his foot.

1951, C. S. Lewis, chapter 6, in Prince Caspian, Collins, published 1998:

An open-ended barrel used to contain rainwater; a rain barrel


cupel

en-verb

cupel (third-person singular simple present cupels, present participle cupelling or cupeling, simple past and past participle cupelled or cupeled)

cupels (present singular third-person)
cupelling (participle present)
cupeling (participle present)
cupelled (participle past)
cupelled (past)
cupeled (participle past)
cupeled (past)
copel (alternative obsolete)
coppel (alternative obsolete)

Borrowed from French coupelle, from Medieval Latin cūpella, from Latin cūpa (“cask”) + -ella (“-elle: forming feminine diminutives”). Equivalent to cup + -el.


ampulla

(historical) An Ancient Roman two-handled vessel.

Miraculously moist, the chrism was kept in an ampulla in Reims cathedral where the coronations of the kings of France were held.

2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 8:

A vessel for containing consecrated wine or oil.


wastebasket

A usually small indoor receptacle for items that are to be discarded; a rubbish bin.


solander

solanders (plural)
Solander (alternative)

Among the many unmatted drawings in the solander box was a large, colorful chalk and pastel Christ Child on greenish-blue laid paper ...

1991, Museum studies, Volumes 17-18, Digitized edition, Art Institute of Chicago, published 2011, page 93:

A box, in the form of a book, used for keeping botanical specimens etc; drop-spine or clamshell box


cardboard box

cardboard boxes (plural)
cardboard-box (alternative)

An industrially prefabricated box made from cardboard, primarily used for packaging goods or materials and often recycled.


pillbox

pillboxes (plural)
pill-box (alternative)

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:

"For the first time in 125 years a powerful enemy was now established across the narrow waters of the English Channel. ... Many people must have been bewildered by the innumerable activities all around them. They could understand the necessity for wiring and mining the beaches, the anti-tank obstacles at the defiles, the concrete pillboxes at the cross-roads, the intrusions into their houses to fill an attic with sandbags, on to their golf-courses or most fertile fields and gardens to burrow out some wide anti-tank ditch." So wrote Winston Churchill in Their Finest Hour, published in 1949.

2023 November 15, Dr Joseph Brennan, “A crucial part of our nation's defences”, in RAIL, number 996, page 60:

(military) A flat, concrete gun emplacement.


garbage can

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-garbage can.wav

(Canada, US) A receptacle, usually roughly cylindrical and wider at the top than at the bottom, which serves as a place to discard waste materials.


rubbish bin

(UK, Ireland, Commonwealth) garbage can, trash can.


incense boat

The vessel that holds incense before it is put into a censer.


cookie jar

I'll just put these cookies in the cookie jar and I'll be right out.

A vessel for storing cookies or other food.

ásaaʼ bááh dáʼákaʼí łikanígíí biih nájihí

Everyone should review what cookies are stored in their Netscape cookie jar. It is a text file […]

2003, Bob Toxen, Real World Linux Security, page 265:

(Internet) The storage space for browser cookies.

caught with one's hand in the cookie jar


tiffin

en-noun

tiffin (countable and uncountable, plural tiffins)

Chinese Pidgin English: tiffin

→ Macanese: tifim, tifinâ

Apparently from English tiffing, present participle of tiff (“to take a small drink, to sip”) (slang).

A cake-like confection composed of crushed biscuits, sugar, syrup, raisins, cherries and cocoa powder, often covered with a layer of melted chocolate.


maund

maunds (plural)
mand (alternative)
mande (alternative Scotland)
mawn (alternative Scotland)
mond (alternative Scotland)

From Middle English maunde, maundie, borrowed from Old French mande, borrowed from Middle Dutch mande, from Old Dutch *manda, from Proto-West Germanic *mandu.


maund

maunds (plural)
mun (alternative)
man (alternative)

From Hindi मन (man) / Urdu من (man), and their source, Persian من, from Middle Persian, from Akkadian 𒈠𒉡𒌑 (manû). The -d is probably from assimilation with Etymology 1 above, or from comparison with pound.

Now the rail has come, and the fire-carriage says buz-buz-buz, and a hundred lakhs of maunds slide across that big bridge.

1888, Rudyard Kipling, “In Flood Time”, in In Black and White, Folio Society, published 2005, page 410:

One mann or maund is approximately 37.32 kilograms.

2023, Radhika Iyengar, Fire on the Ganges, Fourth Estate, page 146:

A unit of weight in south and west Asia, whose value varies widely by location.


maund

en-verb

maund (third-person singular simple present maunds, present participle maunding, simple past and past participle maunded)

maunds (present singular third-person)
maunding (participle present)
maunded (participle past)
maunded (past)

Unclear, but possibly from French mendier or quémander (“to beg”). Compare Romani mang (“to beg”).

You must hereafter maund on your own pads

c. 1622, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger [et al.?], “Beggars Bush”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

(obsolete) To mutter; to mumble or speak incoherently; to maunder.


handbasket

I have always wondered how the world, which is very large, can fit into something as small as a handbasket. To deepen my confusion, I’m not even sure I know what a handbasket is. Aren’t all baskets in fact handbaskets, and if they are, isn’t the prefix hand wholly unnecessary? We should probably say: “The world is going to hell in a basket,” although that sounds even worse, doesn’t it?

2013, Paul Auster, Here and Now: Letters (2008–2011), page 182:


conical flask

(chemistry) A glass laboratory flask of a conical profile with a narrow tubular neck and a flat bottom, used to manipulate solutions or to carry out titrations


Erlenmeyer flask

en-noun

Erlenmeyer flask (plural Erlenmeyer flasks)

Named after German chemist Emil Erlenmeyer, who invented it in 1861.

An assistant arrived with a wheeled cart bearing coffee in an Erlenmeyer flask, cups, and a plate of strange muffins.

2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage, published 2007, page 265:

(chemistry) A glass laboratory flask of a conical profile with a narrow tubular neck and a flat bottom, used to manipulate solutions or carry out titrations.


pony keg

Depending on the crowd, a keg or pony keg may be the way to go. […] For fewer than 20 guests, consider a pony keg, which serves 80 drinks.

2006 February 1, Sadie Jo Smokey, “Beer lineup impressive for Super Bowl Sunday”, in The Arizona Republic, archived from the original on 2006-02-12:

(US) A container for beer holding 7.75 US gallons, equal to half the size of a standard beer keg.


Florence flask

Florence + flask, from a resemblance to wine bottles once used in the area around Florence in Italy

(chemistry) A glass flask with a round body used in a laboratory for holding chemical liquids and solutions. Normally with a round bottom for uniform heating, but may have a flattened base to stand on a flat surface without support.


round-bottomed flask

round-bottomed flask (plural round-bottomed flasks)

(chemistry) A glass flask used in a laboratory for holding chemical liquids and solutions, which has a spherical shape for uniform heating, and one or more long cylindrical necks.


corf

From Middle English corf, borrowed from Middle Low German korf or Middle Dutch korf, ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *korb.

(fishing) A container (basket, wooden box with holes etc.) used to store live fish underwater.

винтер

container used to store live fish underwater


fuel tank

The main fuel tank is slung from the underframe midway between the two bogies, and its capacity of 420 gal. supplies both the main engine and the train heating boiler.

1950 November, “Mixed-Traffic Diesel-Electric Locomotives for Ireland”, in Railway Magazine, page 781:

A container of fuel, especially one for motor fuel inside a vehicle.


dead soldier

Another Dead Soldier! (Lays the bottle gently on its side.)

1968 — Flesh And Blood By William Handley (1968) p.15

We knocked another couple back / The dead soldiers lined up on the table

1999, Elliott Smith, “Baby Britain”, in XO:

When my mother drinks beer, she peeks in the bottle to make sure it's a dead soldier.

2000 — Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 By Andrei Codrescu, Laura Rosenthal (2000) p. 344

By the time the pint was a dead soldier, Decker had the man's life story.

2002 — Thread of the Spider By Val Davis (2002) p. 117

(idiomatic, slang) An empty container, usually a bottle or can which contained an alcoholic beverage.


woodbox

A box used for the storage of wood, particularly firewood.


bottle bank

A large container into which glass bottles are placed for recycling.


canakin

canakins (plural)
canikin (alternative)
cannakin (alternative)
cannikin (alternative)
kannakin (alternative)

From Middle Dutch kanneken, cannekijn (“a little can”), equivalent to can + -kin.

And let me the canakin clink, clink;
And let me the canakin clink
A soldier's a man;
A life's but a span;
Why, then, let a soldier drink.
Some wine, boys!

c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:

Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we'd drink round it!

1851, Herman Melville, chapter 84, in Moby Dick:

That our Dutchman was a gay fellow, who loved, to clink the canakin and spend his leisure in social jollification, his face and art most royally proclaim.

1935 December 7, The Herald, Melbourne, page 37, column 5:


panyard

panyards (plural)
pan-yard (alternative)

(Caribbean) An enclosed area in which a steel band practises.


soup bowl

soup bowls (plural)
soupbowl (alternative uncommon)


gas tank

(US) A fuel tank for gasoline built into equipment, especially vehicles.


rhyton

Ancient Greek ῥυτόν (rhutón), ultimately from ῥέω (rhéō, “to flow”)

A container from which fluids are intended to be drunk, having one handle and usually a base in the form of a head.


dryfat

From dry + fat. See fat (“large tub or vessel”).


tool chest

tool chests (plural)
toolchest (alternative)

A large toolbox; a container, usually portable, for storing tools.


gallipot

gallipots (plural)
galleypot (alternative)
gallypot (alternative)

VVhy, by his skill, / Of vvhich he has left you the inheritance, / Here in a pot: this little gally pot, / Of tincture, high roſe tincture.

1625 January 19 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [Ben Jonson], The Fortunate Isles and Their Union. […], [London: s.n.], published [1625], →OCLC, signature [A4], verso:

Take a Sheet of Lead, and have a piece of Lead made like a Slickſtone; then betvveen them tvvo grind vvhite Lead and Sallet-Oil till 'tis very fine, put it in a Gallipot for uſe.

1729, E[liza] S[mith], “Medicines and Salves. [Another for the Same [Piles]]”, in The Compleat Housewife: Or, Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion: […], 3rd edition, London: […] J. Pemberton, […], →OCLC, page 286:

Here gallypots and vials placed, / Some filled with washes, some with paste, / Some with pomatum, paints and slops, / And ointments good for scabby chops.

1732, Jonathan Swift, The Lady's Dressing Room:

Cut away all the hard part of your Asparagus, and just boil them up with Butter and Salt, then fling them into cold Water, and presently take them out again and let them drain; when they are cold, put them in a Gallipot, large enough for them to lie without bending […]

1736, Richard Bradley, The Country Housewife and Lady's Director, 6th edition, London: D. Brown, page 68:

The walls and ceiling were blackened with flies. Mrs Bangham, expert in sudden device, with one hand fanned the patient with a cabbage leaf, and with the other set traps of vinegar and sugar in gallipots; at the same time enunciating sentiments of an encouraging and congratulatory nature, adapted to the occasion.

1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, chapter VI, in Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC:

Then we swept up the litter from the floor, threw down fresh sawdust, and swallowed gallipots of wine or coffee or water—anything, so long as it was wet.

1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XI, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC:

A small, glazed earthenware jar once used by apothecaries for holding medicine and ointment.


inkpot

inkpots (plural)
ink-pot (alternative)
ink pot (alternative)

I remember at school when unspillable inkpots came in and were said to be a brilliant new idea.

2009, Hunter Davies, Walk Along the Wall, page 51:


paintbox

Nolan visits the Quantel computer laboratory to experiment with its vast digital paintbox.

2015, Nancy Underhill, Sidney Nolan: A Life:

(by extension) Computer hardware or software for creating or editing graphics.


bottle crate

A container used for transport of beverage containers. In the present day they are usually made of plastic, but before the widespread use of plastic they tended to be made of wood or metal.

přepravka

a container used for transport of beverage containers


canteen cup

My tin canteen cup was too hot to touch. I held it in gloved hands, blowing steam from the coffee and watching the sun rise over the fields beyond the fence.

2005, Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 343:

(military, camping) A metal cup which can be nested on the top or under a canteen.


knock box

knock boxes (plural)
knockbox (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-knock box.wav

A small container usually provided with a bar used to empty espresso grounds by pounding a portafilter against the sides or the bar.


lockbox

Petric used his father's key to open a lockbox and remove a 9mm handgun and the game.

2009 January 13, M. R. Kropko, “Video-game addiction rejected as defence”, in Toronto Star:


dewar

Named after British physicist and chemist James Dewar, its inventor.

named-after

A large thermos-like container called a dewar contained 645 gallons of liquid helium to be cooled to within two degrees of absolute zero.

2009 February 17, Guy Gugliotta, “Perseverance Is Paying Off for a Test of Relativity in Space”, in New York Times:

A vacuum flask; a vessel which keeps its contents hotter or cooler than their environment without the need to modify the pressure, by interposing an evacuated region to provide thermal insulation between the contents and the environment.


cag

From Middle English kag, of North Germanic origin, related to Old Norse kaggi, Swedish kagge.


cag

(British, informal) Clipping of cagoule.


cag

cags (plural)
kag (alternative)
kyag (alternative)

From English dialect, from Middle English *kagge, perhaps from Old Norse *kagi, *kaggi, from Proto-Germanic *kagô (“bush, stump”). Cognate with dialectal German Kag (“cabbage stalk, stump”), Swedish kage (“treestump”). Possibly from the same root as Old Norse kaggi (“barrel, cask, keg”). Doublet of chag.

(dialectal) A projecting piece left on a tree or shrub when a branch is severed; knob; stump.


cag

en-verb

cag (third-person singular simple present cags, present participle cagging, simple past and past participle cagged)

cags (present singular third-person)
cagging (participle present)
cagged (participle past)
cagged (past)

Uncertain. Cognate with Scots kag, kagg (“to vex, grieve”). Perhaps from Middle English caggen (“to tie, bind”), possibly from or related to Old Norse kǫgurr (“quilt, blanket, bedcover, coffin cloth”). Alternatively, perhaps allied with Norwegian Nynorsk kjaka (“to wrangle, harass”).

cog

If a little petulance be discovered in SPRING's printed reply, perhaps it was cagged out of him by the very unceremonious manner of approach adopted by Langan and Reynolds […]

1824, Pierce Egan, Boxiana; Or, Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism, page 344:

(slang, now dialectal, transitive) To vex; annoy; insult, offend; grieve.

(slang, now dialectal, transitive) To chatter, gossip.


kendi

Borrowed from Malay kendi, from Sanskrit कुण्ड (kuṇḍa) or कुण्डिक (kuṇḍika, “water pot”).

A container of Asian derivation, usually handleless, used to hold liquid with a broad opening on top for inserting liquid and usually only one spout for pouring.


flacon

Borrowed from French flacon. Doublet of fiasco, flagon, and flask.

October 24, 1872, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, letter to G. W. Greene
two glass flacons for the ink

A small stoppered glass bottle, often used for keeping perfume.


cigar box

cigar boxes (plural)
cigar-box (alternative)

(juggling) A square box usually made of wood or plastic used as a juggling prop.


bubble chamber

These discoveries, along with others produced by bubble chambers at Argonne, Brookhaven, and CERN, supported the SU(3) particle classification.

1998, Robert Bud, Instruments of Science: An Historical Encyclopedia, page 100:

A vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it.


écuelle

Borrowed from French écuelle. Doublet of scuttle and scutella.

A two-handled bowl for soup or porridge.


sugar bowl

The legal maxim that searches must be limited to areas which could reasonably contain evidence relevant to the purpose for which the search warrant was granted. (The maxim is often quoted as "if you are looking for stolen televisions, you cannot look in sugar bowls")


cashbox

cashboxes (plural)
cash box (alternative)
cash-box (alternative)


hoggan-bag

From hoggan (“pork pasty”), which see for more.

[page 39:] Baccy, with cowals for the chowters, Saalt pilchers, and some ' taties, Eggs, clidgy, traade, and hoganbags, Gowks, sparables, and lattice.
[page 45:] When, who but your man com a tott'ring along, / So drunk that I thoft fath, he'd fall in the doong. A let tumble hes hoggan bag jist by the dour, So I cal'd to the man, as one woud to be shoar. Says I, "Martin, dost hire, cheel, tak up tha bag."

1846, William Sandys, Specimens of Cornish Provincial Dialect:

To his work he carries from the surface his keg of water, his “hoggan-bag,” and a tin, carelessly slung over his shoulder, which is full of charges[…]

(Cornwall, obsolete) A miner's bag used to carry provisions.


piggin

Origin unknown; dates back at least to the 16th century English. Compare Scottish Gaelic pigean, diminutive of pigeadh, pige (“an earthen jar, pitcher, or pot”), Irish pigín, pighead, Welsh picyn.

unk

unknown

At length a little negro girl appeared, walking straight as an arrow, with a piggin full of water on her head.

1899, Charles W. Chesnutt, The Goophered Grapevine:

(dialect) A small pail, can, or ladle with the handle on the side; a lading-can. In the colonial era, some buckets were made like a small barrel, but with one stave left extra long. This stave would be carved into a handle so the bucket could be used as an oversized scoop for scattering grain, slopping the hogs, etc.


tenate

Borrowed from Spanish tenate, tanate, from a Nahuan language; cf. Classical Nahuatl tānahtli.

She pretended not to hear him and busied herself opening her tenate—the basket without handles, made of matting—where she carried her clothes.

1942, Maria Cristina Chambers, The Water-Carrier’s Secrets, Oxford University Press, page 150:

“You know how I could be the most beautiful woman in the world?”
“How?”
“With a tenate basket over my head.”

1994, Sergio Galindo, translated by Carolyn Brushwood and John Brushwood, Otilia’s Body: A Novel, The University of Texas Press, translation of Otilia Rauda:

He comes back to pick up the tenate full of tortillas and embarks on his daily journey.

2016, Mario E. López-Gopar, Decolonizing Primary English Language Teaching, Multilingual Matters:

A kind of deep cylindrical basket, usually made of woven palm, used in Mexico.


cask wine

en-noun

cask wine (countable and uncountable, plural cask wines)

At the end of the 1970s, a production line for cask wines was introduced.

2003, Nicholas Faith, Australia's Liquid Gold, unnumbered page:

Also, the big wine companies of the eastern states have put cask wine on supermarket shelves tor less than it costs local Swan Valley to produce, let alone sell. And it must be said that the big company cask wine can be easier to live with the morning after.

2006, James Halliday, Wine Atlas of Australia, page 263:

In this context, bottled wine is a premium product and not generally drunk in the same way or for the same reasons as cask wine.

2009, Ralph Horne, Karli Verghese, Tim Grant, Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice, and Prospects, page 37:

(Australia, New Zealand) Wine that is sealed in a plastic bladder and packaged in a cardboard box.


box wine

box wine (countable and uncountable, plural box wines)

(packaging) A type of wine that is sealed in a plastic bladder and packaged in a cardboard box; cask wine.


scrine

From Old French escrin (French écrin), from Latin scrīnium. Doublet of shrine.

Lay forth out of thine euerlasting scryne
 The antique rolles, which there lye hidden still […]

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

(obsolete) A chest or other box for storing valuables.


workbox

The sewing workbox held fabric, needles, notions, patterns, and other supplies.

A toolbox; a container for the items needed to carry out a task.


skippet

Compare Icelandic skip, English skipper. See ship.

A small, round box used for keeping documents and seals or for covering seals attached to documents


coolamon

From Gamilaraay guliman (and similar forms in neighbouring languages).

Yinti was perishing for a drink of water. He fell down on the sand, and put his mouth to the coolamon.

1992, Jimmy Pike, Yinti, in Heiss & Minter, Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin 2008, p. 140

Wiradjuri people in New South Wales also built large dams, and then carried fish and yabbies in coolamons over large distances to stock the new waterholes.

2018, Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu, Scribe, published 2020, page 47:

(Australia) A vessel with curved sides, typically of wood or bark, used by Australian Aboriginals for holding water, collecting berries etc.


wash basket

wash baskets (plural)
wash-basket (alternative)
washbasket (alternative)

A basket or container of some kind used to store dirty clothes before they are washed.


unguentarium

/ˌʌŋɡwənˈtɛəɹiəm/

A small bottle used to store balms or scented oils


packing case

packing cases (plural)
packing-case (alternative)

In one place, there was a new wooden church, which, having no steeple, and being yet unpainted, looked like an enormous packing-case without any direction upon it.

1842, Charles Dickens, “An American Railroad. Lowell and Its Factory System.”, in American Notes for General Circulation. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 152–153:

[T]he flat packing-case containing the portrait in oils and the three carbon photographs had been pushed under the bed.

1902, Joseph Conrad, “The End of the Tether”, in Youth: A Narrative: And Two Other Stories, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and sons, →OCLC, part III, page 206:

A large, sturdy box or wooden crate used for the secure shipment of goods.

kesto

a large, sturdy box or wooden crate used for the secure shipment of goods


kneading trough

kneading trough (plural kneading troughs)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-kneading trough.wav

And the people tooke their dough before it was leauened, their kneading troughes beeing bound vp in their clothes vpon their ſhoulders.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 12:34, column 2:

I came to a room where I found nothing but an empty bed and a kneading-trough [translating Trog] with the lid fixed down.

1999, Mike Mitchell, translating HJC von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus, III.8, Dedalus 2016, p. 222

A (usually wooden) trough in which dough is kneaded before baking into bread.


borachio

/bɒˈɹæt͡ʃəʊ/

/bɒˈɹæt͡ʃɪəʊ/

/bɔˈɹɑt͡ʃoʊ/

/bɔˈɹɑt͡ʃioʊ/

From Spanish borracho (“drunkard, wine bottle”), from Latin burrus (“red, flushed”), from Ancient Greek πυρρός (purrhós, “tawny, red”).

der

Offence? As I'm a Perſon, I'm aſhamed of you—Fogh! how you ſtink of Wine! Dee think my Niece will ever endure ſuch a Borachio! you'r an abſolute Borachio.

1700, [William] Congreve, The Way of the World, a Comedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act IV, scene x, page 62:


foeder

From Dutch foeder, voeder; from Old Dutch *fuodar, from Proto-Germanic *fōdrą. Doublet of fother and fodder.

A very large wooden vat in which beer is lagered.

fudre

a very large wooden vat in which beer is lagered


glacette

A form of wine cooler, in the form of a double-walled cylindrical vessel, that maintains the temperature of an already chilled bottle of wine rather than cooling it


psykter

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ψυκτήρ (psuktḗr), literally "cooler". See psychro-.

The psykter, attributed to the so-called Kleophrades Painter, and the loutrophoros, attributed to the legendary Darius Painter, will remain at the museum for four years as part of a research program in which both the Italian government and the museum will take part, the university said.

2007 October 27, Elisabetta Povoledo, “Princeton to Return Disputed Art to Italy”, in New York Times:

An Ancient Greek pot with a bulbous body set on a high, narrow foot, used as a wine cooler.


CWT

Central War Time
Central War Time#English

(US, historical) Initialism of Central War Time.


wagger-pagger-bagger

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-wagger-pagger-bagger.wav

Jocular modification of wastepaper basket. See -er.

(Taking flowers from vase) If you don't mind, therefore, I shall deposit them in the wagger-pagger-bagger. (Drops flowers into waste paper basket.)

1948, John Courtenay Trewin, Plays of the year: Volume 1:

If only he hadn't woken himself in the night with ludicrous, fey notions which now thankfully lay at the bottom of the wagger-pagger-bagger—he punched the splintery door of the shed—damn it all to the bloodiest—

2009, H. S. Cross, Riding: Volume 2, page 364:

(UK, slang, dated, public schools) A wastepaper basket.


pelike

en-noun

pelike (plural pelikes or pelikai or pelikae)

pelikes (plural)
pelikai (plural)
pelikae (plural)

The high twisted handles of Pl. XII, 60. 41, and the same sort of shape (but with boldly moulded lip), has been found at Kertch in the same grave as two red figure pelikae and lekythoi, some with r.f. palmettes, others with a check pattern filled in with white dots.

1913, Percy N[eville] Ure, Black Glaze Pottery from Rhitsona in Boeotia (University College, Reading: Studies in History and Archaeology), London: Humphrey [Sumner] Milford, Oxford University Press, page 31:

Polychromy now carried all before it, even the outworn defences of Red-figure; and in the fourth century we find not only white and gold, but other colours—pink, blue, and green—not infrequently used on a group of vases, chiefly hydriae, pelikae, and elaborate toilet-boxes, found at Kertch in the Crimea, in the Cyrenaica and elsewhere, and evidently imported there from Athens Athens (Fig. 17).

1919, Mary Antonie Beatrice Herford, A Handbook of Greek Vase Painting, Manchester University Press, page 103:

The scenes were probably intended as abbreviated representations of combat between griffins and barbarians, since there are many pelikai that carry scenes of Amazons on horseback in combat with griffins.

2002, Faraj Mohmoud Elrashedy, Imports of Post-Archaic Greek Pottery into Cyrenaica: From the End of the Archaic to the Beginning of the Hellenistic Period, Archaeopress, →ISBN, page 58, column 1:

There are also many pelikai (18%) above all in the Attic red figure production as witness the sets from the tombs of the necropolis of S.Venera.

2003, Stefania Visco, “Poseidonia”, in Rosalba Panvini, Filippo Giudice, editors, Ta Attika: Attic Figured Vases from Gela, «L’Erma» di Bretschneider, →ISBN, page 48, column 1:

The black- and red-figure vases that were found are mainly small in size (lekythoi, kylikes, aryballoi, alabastra, kotylae, skyphoi, exaleiptra, and kantharoi), although there are also larger pots (oinochoae, pelikae, hydriae, kraters, and amphoras).

2011, G. Karamitrou-Mentessidi, “Aiani—Historical and Geographical Context”, in Robin J[ames] Lane Fox, editor, Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon, 650 bc–300 ad, Brill, →ISBN, page 106:

In plain and banded wares, pelikai typically have rotund bodies and squat necks, with a pair of ring handles mounted to the shoulder and arching around to attach anywhere from the rim to the lower neck (e.g., PZ PBW 145).

2018, Joseph Coleman Carter, Keith Swift, The Chora of Metaponto 7: The Greek Sanctuary at Pantanello, volume I, Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 807, column 2:

A ceramic container of Ancient Greece, similar to an amphora.


measuring cup

A kitchen utensil used primarily to measure the volume of liquid or bulk solid cooking ingredients.


coinbox

A box inside a machine that stores inserted coins, as in a gas meter or public telephone.


minibox

Today, at iGoogle (google.com/ig), you can dress up all that white space with useful miniboxes containing additional info.

2009 February 26, David Pogue, “Geniuses at Play, on the Job”, in New York Times:


whisket

(obsolete, UK, dialect) A basket; especially, a straw provender basket.

(engineering) A small lathe for turning wooden pins.


barillet

A little cask, or something resembling one, for example of a gun.


dicebox

diceboxes (plural)
dice box (alternative)
dice-box (alternative archaic)

[…] there is a sort of chivalry among the knights of the dice-box: the fame of great players is known all over Europe.

1844, William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon, Chapter:

For Corinius, who gave not a fig for music or dirges, but liked well of carding and dicing, had brought forth his dice box to play with the son of Corund.

1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 32:

The houses looked as if they had been shaken out of a dice box on to the land and stayed just where they lit.

1941, Emily Carr, chapter 9, in Klee Wyck:

A box from which dice are thrown in gaming.


whinnock

From whine + -ock or from whin, wheen (“small amount or number”) + -ock.


giftbox

So Shadow of the Colossus has its gripes: one or two of the colossi phone it in a bit, especially the ones that are only about the size of a bull, which is disappointing when held against flying-snakey-speeding-horsey-leapy-stabby wahey, like a big gift box containing five thousand packing peanuts and a Kinder Surprise.

2010 August 11 (5:00pm), Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, “Shadow of the Colossus” reviewed by Zero Punctuation, 3:27–3:42 and 3:56–4:08


hask

en-verb

hask (third-person singular simple present hasks, present participle hasking, simple past and past participle hasked)

hasks (present singular third-person)
hasking (participle present)
hasked (participle past)
hasked (past)

"You never mind me," returned the trainer, who had been carrying around a couple of spare footballs all the morning, as if afraid some one would steal them. "You just play your 'ardest, that's hall I hask of you."

1897, James Barnes, “Chapter 13”, in A Princetonian:

Pronunciation spelling
pronunciation spelling


romekin

VVine, ever flovving in large Saxon Romekins / About my board; […]

1634 (first performance), William D’avenant [i.e., William Davenant], The Wits: A Comedie; […], published 1636; republished in Two Excellent Plays: […], London: […] G. Bedel, and T[homas] Collins, […], 1665, →OCLC, Act IV, page 68:


headpan

headpans (plural)
head pan (alternative)
head-pan (alternative)

From Middle English heed panne, heved pan, from Old English hēafodpanne (“skull”), from Proto-West Germanic *haubudapannā, equivalent to head + pan. Cognate with Middle Low German hö̂vetpanne (“head, skull”).

cog

(chiefly in Africa) A round bowl-like container, used in construction work and usually carried on one's head.


zir

For quotations using this term, see Citations:zir.

A large clay jug for storing water, common in Egypt and the Sudan since ancient times.


kapala

From Tibetan ཀ་པ་ལ (ka pa la), from Sanskrit कपाल (kapāla), meaning "skull", "forehead", "kapala", ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“head”). Doublet of copra.

A cup made from a human skull and used in tantric rituals.


soap dish

soap dishes (plural)
soapdish (alternative)

A dish-like container to hold a bar of soap, often mounted to the wall of a bathroom.


buck-basket

Falstaff. […] they conveyed me into a buck-basket.
Ford. A buck-basket!
Falstaff. By the Lord, a buck-basket! rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins […]

c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]:

Iane, let the Buck-basket be got ready for the foul-cloaths, de’e hear, and bid the Landress take care to mend all the shifts; these great Ramping-girles do so tear their Linnen, it almost makes me wilde.

1691, Thomas d’Urfey, Love for Money, or, The Boarding School, London: J. Hindmarsh, act II, scene 2, page 21:

(obsolete) A basket in which clothes are carried to be washed.


sagemono

From Japanese 提げ物 (sagemono, literally “hanging thing”).

bor

With the downfall of the samurai, for instance, swords as works of art went out of existence. Then those artists had to turn their attention to the embellishment of little articles in common use, such as the sagemono or the hanging things which the Japanese men carried attached to their obis (the tight sashes that hold the kimono in place). The latter consisted of a pipe in a case, a tobacco pouch, perhaps a box of flint and steel, an inro carrying seals or medicines, or a pen case with a section for the ink.

1933 January, Lillian Dow Davidson, “Japan Faces the Rising Sun”, in The Rotarian, volume 42, number 1, Chicago: Rotary International, →ISSN, page 43:

Although a netsuke could be as simple as a stick with two holes in it or as elaborate as a piece of fine jewelry, its function placed certain restrictions on material and design. It had to be small enough to slide easily under the obi but bulky enough to keep the sagemono from slipping down.

1982, Barbra Teri Okada, Netsuke: Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Harry N. Abrams, →ISBN, page 9:

A sagemono incorporates two connecting holes forming a channel called the himotōshi, through which a silk cord is threaded to attach the sagemono to the obi.

2002, Christine L. Paglia, Telling Toggles: Netsuke in Context, Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College, →OCLC, page 7:

(historical) Any kind of carrying container hung from one's belt or sash (in Japan), such as a coin purse, tobacco pouch, or pillbox.


pizza box

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pizza box.wav

Compact "pizza box" personal computers with integrated components are more desirable since they occupy less precious and scarce desktop real estate.

1991 March 12, William F. Zachmann, “A Case of Computer Design”, in PC Magazine:

(computing) A wide, flat, square style of computer chassis, similar in shape to a pizza delivery box.


bottom of the barrel

He went from being at the bottom of the barrel to being an inch above the bottom of the barrel.

Here is the first new collection of Rohmer stories in years, and they are the absolute bottom of the barrel! Detective stories, romances, war stories — everything but the "strange stories" advertised in the title.

2007, Robert Reginald, Douglas Menville, Forgotten Fantasy: Issue #2, December 1970, page 32:

The bottom of the barrel as far as accommodation in the Ville Nouvelle goes.

2010, Donna Wheeler et al., Tunisia, page 212:

I know it’s hard work in our game, and you get to a point, 15 years into a career, where you’re not bringing in much dough. But it’s proper bottom of the barrel, a celebrity Britain’s Got Talent.

2023 March 5, Miranda Sawyer, quoting Jason Williamson, “Sleaford Mods: ‘The UK is like a crazy golf course – all we’ve got left are landmarks’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

(figurative, somewhat derogatory) The lowest possible level of a person or thing in terms of character or quality; also, a person or thing at such a level.


mocuck

From an Algonquian language, probably Ojibwe makak (“semi-rigid container, birch bark basket, box”).

cog

The Huron of Canada expanded the use of mocucks from cookery to the warming of squash seed over a fire […]

2004, Mary Ellen Snodgrass, Encyclopedia of Kitchen History, page 660:

(US) A box-like container made from birch-bark, especially one in which sugar is stored.


croggan

From time immemorial "croggans" and "bollachans" or milk basins were made out of clay by the people in the district for their domestic use, but besides these there is no record of any other utensils having been manufactured.

1901, Windsor and Kenfield, Brick and Clay Record, volumes 14-15, page 265:

He had sent the ground officer with a "croggan of tar" with which he marked the ears of all the stock.

1982, Inverness Gaelic Society, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, volume 53, page 72:

In the Western Isles a native tradition of building pots, known as croggans, by hand, survived into the 20th century.

1989, National Museums of Scotland, The Wealth of a Nation, page 139:

(Scotland) A clay urn made by hand in the Outer Hebrides.


toybox

A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic.

1831, Thomas Carlyle, “Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh”, in Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh. […], London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, 2nd book, page 104:


playbox

[…] she brought down in the towel-covered clothes-basket, on the wheel-barrow, […] a playbox with a secret drawer […]

These paper and print designs may be used to decorate nursery playboxes[…]

1947, Viola Hening, Fun with scraps, page 126:

That had all happened a year ago, and now all four of them were sitting on a seat at a railway station with trunks and playboxes piled up round them. They were, in fact, on their way back to school.

1951, C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia:


pillow box

A long, curved giftbox made of card, shaped like a pillow.


pouncet-box

pouncet-boxes (plural)
pouncet box (alternative)

Carrying a pouncet-box was a common custom among the upper classes in the 16th and 17th centuries.

And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held / A pouncet-box.

c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], lines 37-38:

1866, Septimus Piesse, Pouncet Box and Pomander, entry in Notes and Queries: 3rd Series, Volume 9: January—June 1866, page 392,
The pouncet box mentioned by Shakespeare in the Midsummer Night's Dream, I have always considered as a similar article to the pomander worn by "fashionable people" in the time of Elizabeth, containing powdered perfumery, such as musk, civet, and various spices.

1894 (1819), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Ginn & Company, page 364,
" […] besides what is broken and spoiled among their rude hands, such as my pouncet-box and silver crisping-tongs."

1957, George Bernard Hughes, Small Antique Silverware, Bramhall House, page 186,
More usually, however, the pouncet box hung from the waist by a black cord, until early in the seventeenth century. To Elizabethans the ceremonial of inhaling the piquant odour from the pouncet box was a social grace.

(historical) A box with a perforated lid, used to contain pounce or perfume.


sluice box

sluice boxes (plural)
sluicebox (alternative)
sluice-box (alternative)

A box with riffles along the bottom, used to trap heavier gold particles as water washes them and the other material along the box.


zarph

From Turkish zarf, from Arabic ظَرْف (ẓarf, “dish, container”). See also zarf.

A highly decorated and bejewelled Turkish tea cup.


dolsot

A stone bowl used especially for serving bibimbap.


jordan

jordans (plural)
iurdan (alternative)
iurdane (alternative)
iurdone (alternative)
yordan (alternative)
iourden (alternative)
iorden (alternative)
jurdon (alternative)
jordon (alternative)
jourdon (alternative)
jordain (alternative)
jurden (alternative)
jourdan (alternative)
jorden (alternative)

From Middle English jordan, from Latin jurdanus, unattested outside of England and of uncertain etymology. Usually derived from a clipped form of Jordan bottle, supposedly a bottle of curative water brought back from the River Jordan by Crusaders and pilgrims to the Holy Land, but this seems unsupported in its actual attestations. Its use for chamber pots may derive from the alchemical device having been used to hold urine.

Make a good lute... and þerwiþ daub þi Iordan al aboute... and putte al þi mater in þe Iordan and hange it ouer þe fier by þe necke þᵗ þe glas be almoost an hond brede fro þe coolis.

(obsolete) A vessel resembling a retort bulb or Florence flask with a truncated neck and flared mouth, used by medieval doctors and alchemists.


money box

money boxes (plural)
moneybox (alternative)
money-box (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-money box.wav

A tin, often with a slot in the top, for depositing coins, used by children to save money.


tweese

Tweese, or box of instruments

1660, James Howell, Lexicon Tetraglotton:

(obsolete) A surgeon's case of instruments.


milk churn

milk churns (plural)
milk-churn (alternative)

"Why, mother," laughed the farmer as he passed through the kitchen, swinging the great milk-churns, "you've got almost more than you can manage there."

1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 7”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

A tall, conical or cylindrical container for the transportation of milk.


drinking horn

It was longer than any drinking horn that Thor had ever seen, but he was not concerned. He was Thor, after all, and there was no drinking horn he could not drain.

2017, Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology, Bloomsbury Publishing, page 149:

(chiefly historical) A drinking vessel fashioned from an animal's horn.


rice bowl

(slang) A jealously defended institutional resource such as a program, project, or budget.


cinerary urn

A vessel used to preserve cremated remains.


jam jar

jam jars (plural)
jam-jar (alternative)
jamjar (alternative)

/ˈdʒam ˌdʒɑː/

Empty jam jars are handy for keeping odd bits and pieces in.


backet

(Scotland) A shallow wooden trough for carrying ashes, coals, etc.


lekythos

en-noun

lekythos (plural lekythoi or lekythoses)

lekythoi (plural)
lekythoses (plural)
lecythus (alternative)
lekythus (alternative)

A pottery flask with a narrow neck, used in Ancient Greece for storing oil.


seatainer

(Australia) A large container for shipping freight by sea.


tea chest

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-tea chest.wav

(historical) A standardised box, made of plywood with riveted metal corners, used to transport tea to markets.

(by extension) A similar sized box made of cardboard, used for transporting and storing household items.


water tank

water tanks (plural)
watertank (alternative)

A tank (type of large container) used to store water.

पाण्याची टाकी

pāṇyācī ṭākī


dustbag

dustbags (plural)
dust bag (alternative)
dust-bag (alternative)

These may contain filters manufactured without the use of harmful materials and may not require a dustbag. Dyson vacuum cleaners are examples of designs with such characteristics.

2002, Patrick W. Jordan, Designing Pleasurable Products, page 80:

The bag inside a vacuum cleaner where collected dust is stored.


Bologna bottle

A glass bottle that has had its outside cooled slowly and its inside cooled rapidly. It has great external strength but is liable to shatter from a mere scratch on the inside.


stashbox

People here are much more likely to have the 3 volumes of Marx's Kapital (cheap in East Berlin) on their shelves than a stashbox full of cannabis.

1983, Mitch Cohen, Berlin, Contemporary Writing from East and West Berlin, Bandanna Books, →ISBN, page 19:

Inside the van was everything Chesley needed in this world: a mattress to sleep on, his toolcase, his stashbox, and a towering blue glass bong.

2001, Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill, Baen Books (2001), unnumbered page

He offered me ravioli and pot from the stashbox where he kept his coke and rolling papers, […]

2009, Julie Klauser, I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated, Gotham Books, published 2010, →ISBN:

A box used to store a stash of something, especially illicit narcotics.


tuckerbox

tuckerboxes (plural)
tucker box (alternative)

His dog not only sat on the tuckerbox but also shit on it.

1982, Paul Radley, My Blue-Checker Corker and Me, Sydney: Fontana/Collins, page 96:

To Charlie, the function of a house was to keep the dew off your swag at night and shade the waterbag and tuckerboxes during the day.

2005, Jim Gasteen, Under the Mulga: A Bush Memoir, page 182:

(Australia) A box used when travelling to store food or provisions.


cakebox

The blank discs also cost about $100 each—compared to less than 3 cents each in bulk cakebox form.

2013, Scott Mueller, Upgrading and Repairing PCs, page 539:

A cylindrical container for recordable compact discs.


chattee

chattees (plural)
chatti (alternative)
chattie (alternative)
chatty (alternative)

In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one above another: below the sixth chattee is a small cage, which contains a little green parrot.

1868, Mary Eliza Frère, Old Deccan Days, page 14:


Brown Betty teapot

Brown Betty teapot (plural Brown Betty teapots)

A teapot made from red terracotta clay and covered in Rockingham brown glaze, originally made in Stoke-on-Trent by the Elder Brothers circa 1695.


memory box

Watch the elderly, even the escapists, as they nurse nostalgia: the wonder as they open memory boxes or old letters or family albums […]

2006, F. David Martin, Facing Death: Theme and Variations, page 43:

A box containing items that serve as reminders, used for example in therapy for dementia, or as a memorial to a deceased infant.


dabba

(mathematics) del, the partial difference symbol ∂


dropbox

dropboxes (plural)
drop box (alternative)
drop-box (alternative)

A desktop computer leaves changes in a dropbox on the network.

1997, Alison Balter, Alison Balter's Mastering Access 97 Development, Sams Publishing, →ISBN, page 696:

(computing) A computer folder to which files may be dragged and dropped and from which users of other computers on the network can access those files.


kajawah

kajawahs (plural)
kajawa (alternative)
kajava (alternative)
kujawah (alternative)
cajua (alternative)
cajava (alternative)
kedgwa (alternative)
kedgway (alternative)
cedgeway (alternative)
cadjowa (alternative)
kedjavé (alternative)
kerjava (alternative)
kidjawah (alternative)
kidjahwah (alternative)
khajawah (alternative)
kajaweh (alternative)
kajavah (alternative)

From Hindi कजावा (kajāvā), from Urdu and Classical Persian کجاوه (kajāwa, “kajawah, howdah”).

der

For men and women who suffer from being in the saddle for so many hours, there is a choice between the "kerjava" and the "takht-i-rawan." The kerjava, in its best appearance, takes the form of two very small gypsy tents made of light bands of wood, the top bent circular, and covered with shawls or carpets. In each of these tents a man or woman sits after the kerjavas have been slung, like panniers, across the saddle of a strong mule. In the kerjava one must sit cross-legged, or with one's feet hanging out.

1877, Robert Arthur Arnold, Through Persia by Caravan, page 125:

(Middle East, historical) Similar vehicles borne by other animals.


vanity box

(historical) A small box, usually jewelled or of precious metal and worn on a chain, containing a mirror, powder puff, and other small toilet articles for a woman.


aryballos

en-noun

aryballos (plural aryballoses or aryballoi)

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀρύβαλλος (arúballos).

An Incan ceramic vessel with long neck, bulbous body, two handles, and pointed bottom.


litter bin

litter bins (plural)
litterbin (alternative)

The pull-out or pull-down tables and litter bins in every compartment and seating bay are amenities which women, particularly those with young children, have been crying out for almost as long as railways have been in operation.

1964 July, Mary Allen, “A Woman's View of the New Coaches”, in Modern Railways, page 9: