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lunchbox

UK/ˈlʌntʃˌbɒks/US/ˈlʌntʃˌbɒks/
nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans spoken

Other forms: lunchboxes

A lunchbox is the small container a packed midday meal travels in. Sandwiches, an apple, and a note if you are lucky.

It is an object of real significance in childhood, since what is in it and what it looks like are both socially loaded, as any parent knows. Plastic boxes have replaced tins, and reusable ones have replaced cling film. The word is one word. Britain's packed lunch and America's brown bag lunch describe the same thing arriving by different means.

TurboShues · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of lunchbox

  1. 1nounlunchboxA container for carrying a packed meal.B2

    “She found last week's sandwich still in the lunchbox.”

Where it comes from

From lunch + box.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 6 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

lunchbox in the wild

  • A lunch box (or lunchbox) is a hand-held container used to transport food, usually to work or to school.

    Lunchbox

  • The dabbawalas constitute a lunchbox delivery and return system for workers in Mumbai and Karachi.

    Dabbawala

  • The lunchboxes are picked up in the late morning, delivered predominantly using bicycles and railway trains, and returned empty in the afternoon.

    Dabbawala

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.