box of tricks
- noun
- Informal
:
arsenal de trucos
- As a problem-solver, she always carries a box of tricks filled with creative techniques to tackle challenges.
Examples
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Look at this box of tricks.
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Get my box of tricks!
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We went to, I used my Dark Arts box of tricks to find out where they all lived and we went to their home addresses.
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James, here's your box of tricks!
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Leiris is dipping into his Duchampian box of tricks to shuffle and reshuffle his fiches into ever-new configurations.
Academic text (2005) -
The magician amazed the audience with his box of tricks, using clever methods to perform astonishing feats.
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His experience in the field allowed him to pull out a few surprises from his box of tricks during the presentation.
Synonyms
11
4.1
A set of useful methods someone uses to solve problems
How Resourceful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a set of skills or techniques' is directly inferable from combining 'box' (a container) with 'tricks' (clever methods), i.e. a container holding tricks = a collection of techniques. This container metaphor and the noun-of-noun composition are cross-linguistically common and follow standard English patterns, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily understand it.
Etymology
The phrase box of tricks comes from the image of a magician's box full of small, surprising tricks. When someone reaches into that box and pulls out a useful trick to fix a problem, the phrase means a person's 'set of skills' or 'clever methods' for getting things done.