Boxes

How to spell boxes

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce boxes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does boxes mean?

1. nounMore than one box; rigid containers, typically with flat sides, used to hold or transport things.
2. verbThird-person singular present of box: to fight with the fists as a sport.

Boxes in a sentence

• noun

  The removal van was already full of cardboard boxes.

• verb

  He boxes at the local gym every weekend.

• noun

  She stacked the storage boxes neatly in the attic.

• verb

  My cousin boxes in the lightweight division.

Where does boxes come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word box reaches back to the late Old English box, which named both a small container and the boxwood tree from which such containers were carved. That in turn came from the Latin buxus, meaning the box tree, a word the Romans themselves had borrowed from the Greek puxos for the same evergreen shrub. Because the dense, fine wood was prized for turning small lidded cases, the name of the tree slid across to the object made from it, a neat example of a material lending its name to a product. The separate meaning 'to strike with the fist' arose later in Middle English from an unrelated box of uncertain origin, and the two senses have shared a spelling ever since. The plural and verb form boxes simply adds -es because English inserts that extra vowel after a hissing x sound, which is exactly the spelling point worth remembering: it is never just an s.

How the word is built

• box (container/strike)
• -es (plural / third-person singular suffix added after a sibilant)