box office
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See also: box-office
English
A theatrical box office
A cinema box office
Alternative forms
- box-office
- boxoffice (less common)
Etymology
1786,[1] presumably from sales of boxes, box seats (“separated private seating”).[2][3] Sense of “total sales” from 1904.[1]
Folk etymology is that this derives from Elizabethan theatre, where theater admission was collected in a box attached to a long stick, passed around the audience.[2][3] However, first attestation is over a century later (theaters were closed in 1642), making this highly unlikely.
Pronunciation
- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs/
- (US) enPR: bäksʹä'fĭs, bäksʹô'fĭs, IPA(key): /ˈbɑksˌɑfɪs/, /ˈbɑksˌɔfɪs/
Audio (US): (file)
Noun
box office (countable and uncountable, plural box offices)
- (countable, film, theater) A place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema.
- (uncountable, by extension, film) The total amount of money paid by people worldwide to watch a movie at cinemas/movie theaters.
- 2005, Barry Day, Coward on Film: The Cinema of Noël Coward, page 88:
- If any further insurance was required, the popularity of the three "Topper" films in the 1930s — based on Thorne Smith's characters — would seem to indicate that amusing ghosts made good box office.
- (uncountable) Quality of an entertainment or spectacle that makes it very popular with the public, or likely to be so.
- His performance last night was pure box office.
Derived terms
Derived terms
Related terms
- ticket office, booking office ticket window (for train, bus)
Translations
ticket office
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See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “box-office”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 William and Mary Morris, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, HarperCollins, New York, 1977, 1988
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Facts on File, New York, 1997
- “Re: Box office, box seat”, The Phrase Finder, ESC, March 22, 2002
Further reading
- “box office”, in Collins English Dictionary.
- “box office”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “box office”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “box office”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.