sweatbox
9.3
A closed box where tobacco leaves, fruit, or animal skins are kept hot to help cure them
- noun
- /ˈswɛtˌbɑks/
- Archaic
- The farmer used a sweatbox to cure the tobacco leaves he harvested last season.
Examples
-
To process the animal hides, they put them in a sweatbox to ensure proper sweating.
-
In the old workshop, a sweatbox was essential for conditioning the fruit before drying.
-
What are you making at that sweatbox anyway?
-
This is a sweatbox.
Fiction book (1993)
Surface Forms
sweatbox singular
sweatboxes plural
Morphology
Etymology
Sweatbox comes from the simple parts sweat ('to sweat' or 'become moist') and box ('a container'). It names a box used to make tobacco, fruit, or hides warm and damp so they 'sweat' and can be cured or processed.