[SNUFF sb.3 1.]
1. A box for holding snuff, usually small enough to be carried in the pocket.
1687. Miége, Gt. Fr. Dict., II. A Snuff-box, une Tabatiere.
1706. Reflex. upon Ridicule, 207. All the Snuff-boxes she has in Pockets, and the Profusion she makes of Snuff.
1711. ‘J. Distaff,’ Char. Don Sacheverellio, 4. I have heard the Lid of a Beau’s Snuff-Box crack in his Pocket.
1786. Mme. D’Arblay, Diary, 25 July. She had brought the Queen’s snuff-box, to be filled with some snuff.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., ii. Colonel Bulder and Sir Thomas Clubber exchanged snuff-boxes.
1846. McCulloch, Brit. Empire (1854), I. 293. Those beautifully jointed and varnished wooden snuff-boxes, long in universal demand.
1882. Serjt. Ballantine, Exper., xxiii. 221. The owner of the snuff-box is the proprietor of the hall.
b. Musical snuff-box, one fitted with mechanism capable of playing tunes.
1825. T. Hook, Sayings, Ser. II. Passion & Princ., ix. III. 139. It was actually handed round the room like a musical snuff-box, or any other indifferent trinket.
1852. R. S. Surtees, Sponge’s Sp. Tour, l. The child, who had been wound up like a musical snuff-box, then went off as follows.
1883. Grove’s Dict. Music, III. 542.
c. A puff-ball or similar fungus; usually devils’ snuff-box (see DEVIL sb. 25 c.).
1883–. in Hampshire and Somerset glossaries.
2. slang. The nose.
1853. ‘C. Bede,’ Verdant Green, I. xvi. There’s a crack on your snuff-box.
3. attrib. and Comb., as snuff-box maker, painting, wright; snuff-box bean, a species of sea-bean used medicinally, or the plant producing this; snuff-box gourd, a species of Lagenaria.
1714. Lond. Gaz., No. 5268/10. Snuff-box-maker.
1765. H. Walpole, Lett. (1840), V. 68. Snuff-box-wrights, milliners, &c.
1884. Athenæum, 9 Aug., 183/3. After a trial of snuff-box painting at Mauchline, Leitch came to London.
1884. trans. De Candolle’s Orig. Cultivated Pl., 245. Other less common varieties have a flattened, very small fruit, like the snuff-box gourd.
Hence Snuff-boxer, a seller of snuff-boxes.
a. 1871. De Morgan, Budget Parad. (1872), 153. Fifty years ago a fashionable snuff-boxer would be under inducement … to have a stock with very objectionable pictures.
