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sweatbox

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sweatbox

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From sweat + box.

noun sweatboxes

  1. Any box or boxlike structure used to induce sweating, such as of hides or tobacco Australia Post has been accused of endangering staff with "sweatbox" uniforms and restricting earlier starts to save money.
  2. US, slang A jail cell.
  3. UK, slang A compartment in a police van to hold a prisoner being transported. They shoved me in the back of a police van and started driving to the cop shop. I was sitting in the sweatbox, wondering how the Dibble had got onto me so quickly, when I heard a voice from another section of the van say, 'Are you P from Macclesfield?'
  4. A small overheated cell or room used for solitary confinement or torture. In the summer of 1945, one young boy died of heart failure while locked in a sweatbox, a popular corrective at that time.
  5. slang A small nightclub packed to capacity where people get hot and sweaty.
  6. The room where a scene is reviewed.
  7. The review process that takes place in a sweat box.

verb sweatboxes · sweatboxing · sweatboxed

  1. slang, transitive To place (a person) in a jail cell or a police van compartment.
  2. transitive To review (work) in the designated room for such reviews.

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Cite this
MLA

"sweatbox." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/sweatbox. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

sweatbox. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/sweatbox

Chicago

"sweatbox." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/sweatbox.

BibTeX
@misc{sweatbox_2026,
  title = {sweatbox},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/sweatbox},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}