subs. (printers’).—Miscellaneous paragraphs for filling up a column of type: PADDING (q.v.): applied either to MS. copy or stereo. Hence BALAAM-BOX (or -BASKET) = (1) a receptacle for such matter; and (2) a waste-paper basket. [WEBSTER: ‘a cant term’: popularised by Blackwood, in which Noctes Ambrosianæ appeared. See Numbers xxii. 30.]
1822–36. J. WILSON, Noctes Ambrosianæ, II. xxvi. Bring in BALAAM, and place him on the table.
1826. SCOTT, Malachi Malagrowther, iii. 3. How much BALAAM (speaking technically) I have edged out of your valuable paper.
1827. Blackwood’s Magazine, xxi. 340. Several dozen letters on the same subject now in our BALAAM-BOX.
1839. LOCHART, Scott, lxx. (1842), 622. BALAAM is the cant name for asinine paragraphs about monstrous productions of nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used whenever the real news of the day leaves an awkward space that must be filled up somehow.
1861. A. K. H. BOYD, The Recreations of a Country Parson, 2. 59 S. Rubbishing articles, which are at present consigned to the BALAAM-BOX.
1873. FITZEDWARD HALL, Modern English, 17. An essay for the Edinburgh Review, in ‘the old unpolluted English language,’ would have been consigned by the editor to his BALAAM-BASKET.
1877. Notes and Queries, 5 S. vii. 270. 2. At the risk of getting into your BALAAM-BOX, I venture to record the whole contents of my bundle.
