icebox
icebox Lexical Profile
icebox Game Scores & Validity
• noun
North American A modern electric refrigerator.
"Don't forget to put the milk back in the icebox so it doesn't spoil overnight."
An extremely cold room or place.
"The office is an absolute icebox in the winter because the central heating system is completely broken."
An insulated cabinet or chest cooled by ice, used historically for preserving food before the invention of mechanical refrigerators.
"Before buying their first electric refrigerator in the 1930s, the family relied on a wooden icebox that required daily deliveries of block ice."
Word Nuance & Usage
While originally denoting a non-mechanical insulated cabinet cooled by delivered ice blocks, 'icebox' is still occasionally used as a colloquial term for a modern electric refrigerator, particularly by older generations.
• Rhymes for icebox
Word Origin & Etymology
Coined in the mid-19th century in American English, formed by combining 'ice' and 'box', referring to the wooden cabinets lined with tin or zinc that were used to store perishable food with blocks of ice.