1. A box for holding tobacco, esp. a small flat box to be carried in the pocket.
1599. B. Jonson, Cynthia’s Rev., I. i. Pray Iove the perfum’d courtiers keep their casting-bottles … from you, or our more ordinary gallants their tobacco-boxes.
1654. Gayton, Pleas. Notes, III. v. 100. A Tobacco box with a Burning Glasse.
1859. Fairholt, Tobacco, 229. The old brass tobacco-box was generally oblong, and contained all the smoker required…. There is a horn tobacco-box preserved in London.
2. Local name for two N. American fishes, from their flattened shape: (a) a species of skate or ray, Raia erinacea; (b) the common sunfish, Pomotis gibbosus, or other species of Pomotis (Cent. Dict.).
