[f. BOX sb.2, which yields a large number of disconnected uses.]
1. trans. To furnish or fit with a box.
1481–90. Howard Househ. Bks. (1841), 190. My Lord paid me … for boxyng a peyre wheles.
1844. Regul. & Ord. Army, 102. For a box trigger-plate, including new trigger, and boxing ditto, and fitting the same fit for service, 1s. 3d.
b. To give a Christmas-box (colloq.); whence boxing-day.
† 2. trans. To bleed by cupping; to cup. Obs. Cf. BOIST v.
1477. Earl Rivers (Caxton), Dictes. The ij to boxe and lete blode.
1533. Elyot, Cast. Helth (1541), 60. Of scarifyeng called boxyng or cuppyng.
1543. Traheron, Vigo’s Chirurg., II. xix. 30. To boxe, or cuppe the place wyth depe scarificatyon.
3. To put into a box.
1586. Cogan, Haven Health, cvii. (1636), 108. If it [Marmalade] be stiffe, then take it off and box it, while it is warm.
1616. Surfl. & Markh., Countr. Farm, 424. Straine it, and boxe it after you haue strewed sugar in the boxes.
1741. Compl. Fam. Piece, I. iii. 239. Lay them drying … then box them.
1860. Gosse, Rom. Nat. Hist., 26. Here is the ‘copper underwing,’ that seems so unsuspicious that nothing appears easier than to box it.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 4 July, 6/1. Eighty girls are employed in sorting cigars and boxing them.
b. To box up: to ‘put up’ in a box: also fig.
1672. Marvell, Reh. Transp., I. 192. The Sentences shall be boxed up in several paragraphs.
1674. Flatman, To Mr. Austin, 16. Thus John Tradeskin starves our greedy eyes, By boxing up his new found Rarities.
1823. J. Badcock, Dom. Amusem., 147. Box up the refined potass carefully.
4. To lodge a document in a Law Court.
1868. Act 31 & 32 Vict., c. § 63. The Court may order such documents as appear necessary to be printed and boxed.
5. To confine as in a box, or in uncomfortably narrow limits; often with up, in.
1710. Swift, Tatler, No. 238, ¶ 3. Box’d in a Chair the Beau impatient sits.
1824. Mrs. Sherwood, Waste Not, II. 5. How do you like being boxed up with the old lady?
1865. J. Cameron, Malayan India, 83. The wall of jungle which boxes in each plantation.
6. trans. and intr. To fit compactly as in a box; techn. to fit with a scarf joint.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., xxix. 459. Savin has opposite, erect, decurrent leaves, with the oppositions boxed into each other along the branches.
c. 1850. Rudim. Navig. (Weale), 152. Its lower end scarphs or boxes into the keel.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., 126. The stem is boxed when it is joined to the fore end of the keel by a side scarph.
7. trans. To make an excavation in the trunk of (a tree) for the sap to collect.
1720. Dudley, Maple Sugar, in Phil. Trans., XXXI. 27. You box the Tree.
1755. Gentl. Mag., XXV. 551. Turpentine … gathered by boxing the pitch-pine trees.
1865. Morning Star, 5 April. The trees after being ‘boxed’ begin to produce turpentine immediately.
8. To partition of into boxes.
1869. Daily News, 31 May, 5/5. The fronts of the galleries have been snugly boxed off.
9. slang. To overturn in his box (e.g., a watchman).
1851. Thackeray, Eng. Hum., ii. (1858), 59. Were they all … hunting in the country, or boxing the watch? Ibid. (1852), Esmond, II. v. (1876), 196. The incorrigible young sinner, was abroad boxing the watch, or scouring St. Giles’s.
10. Sc. To wainscot, to panel walls with wood. (Jamieson).
11. To take with, or appeal to, the box audience of a theater, etc.
1672. Villiers (Dk. Buckhm.), Rehearsal (Arb.), 29. It shall read … and act and plot and shew, ay, and pit, box and gallery, I gad, with any Play in Europe.
1831. Macaulay, Moore’s Byron. The rants of Byron’s rhyming plays would have pitted it, boxed it, and galleried it, with those of any Bayes or Bilboa.
12. Naut. To box the compass: a. (see quot.)
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Boxing, among sailors, is used to denote the rehearsing the several points of the compass in their proper order.
1836. Marryat, Midsh. Easy, xviii. I can raise a perpendicular … and box the compass.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., To Box the Compass. Not only to repeat the names of the thirty-two points in order and backwards, but also to be able to answer any and all questions respecting its division.
b. fig. To go round to the direct opposite; to make a complete turn.
1815. Scribbleomania, 213. Cobbet … Has box’d every point of the compass to Gammon.
1833. Fraser’s Mag., VIII. 29. The Mercury … boxed round the political compass, following instinctively its old employer—Interest.
1869. Blackmore, Lorna D., xliii. (D.). The wind would regularly box the compass … in the course of every day, following where the sun should be.
13. To box off: to turn the head of a vessel by hauling the head-sheets to windward and bracing the headyards aback; to box-haul. To box about: to sail up and down, often changing the direction.
1832. Marryat, N. Forster, xxii. You must box her off.
1836. Fraser’s Mag., XIV. 571. He often boxed about, in his Highland yacht, for a week together.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxiii. (1856), 185. While thus boxing about on one of our tacks.
