thunderbox — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A chamber pot enclosed in a box; a portable commode.

   Usage

   • Slang

   Examples

   More examples (2)

   True, our cash would run out, but Charleton wouldn't let us starve. He'd put us into shorts, and we should wash the dishes and clean the thunder-boxes and take out guests for walks.

   Then, after another pause, he said: "Well, if you must know, it's my Thunder-box." […] He opened it, showing a mechanism of heavy cast-iron brass and patterned earthenware of solid Edwardian workmanship. On the inside of the lid was a plaque bearing the embossed title Connolly's Chemical Closet.

   [T]he response would sound from some soldier unseen, perhaps astride a thunderbox in the ablutions.

   More examples (6)

   In the present age the historian must content himself with the role of humble camp follower to the sociologist and economist. But like the sweeper in my regiment who carried the thunder-box of the sahibs through the Arakan campaign there is the hope that in the end it is he and not they who will be awarded the decoration.

   Then there were the million-odd Indians, coolies, gardeners, house servants, ayahs, syces and others who performed the tasks that no one else would tackle; they emptied the "thunder boxes", collected the refuse and were the main source of labour in the docks.

   I am afraid his history on the advent of pan latrines or what is better known to 'thoroughbred colonials' as "Thunder Boxes" was rather wanting; and I don't blame him. […] [W]ell after the end of the Second World War some boarding schools in Cape Coast were still using "thunder boxes".

   At Roorkee, in King George's Own Royal Bengal Sappers and Miners quarters, thunderboxes with a china receptacle were the only form of sanitation. Outside the little room in which the thunderbox was enclosed prowled a "sweeper" with a wickerwork basket. As soon as the thunderbox had been used, the sweeper hurried forward and carried off triumphantly the china receptacle and contents.

   The adults in the family used commodes or ‘thunderboxes’ – European-style toilets on which one sat. The children and servants relieved themselves in the traditional Indian way at ground level. […] [W]hen running water was introduced, the thunderboxes became flushable.

   [O]ur nocturnal visitors would, with much clattering and banging, collect and dispose of the contents of our commodes, or thunder boxes, doubtless to be used as fertiliser for distant vegetable gardens. We had about half a dozen thunder boxes ranged down one side of the bathroom,[…]. The practice was to leave unused thunder boxes with their seats and lids up, to indicate which were available, and then close them after use.

2. Any lavatory or toilet, especially a rudimentary outdoor latrine or toilet, or an outhouse.

   Usage

   • Australia
   • UK usage
   • broadly
   • Slang

   Examples

   More examples (6)

   Meantime the ICE [Institute of Consumer Ergonomics] experts are poring over their photographs, and making measurements, which, presumably, will go into a computer, and out will come the specification for the perfect thunderbox.

   In the old days, when there was a corrugated iron thunderbox, the Holts' guests were told to approach it with caution: where other thunderboxes had redback spiders, the local ones tended to have taipans.

   It's an invaluable open-sided box with no bottom and a hole in the top. Perch this over a hole in the ground and voila! you have a thunder box. Comfy to sit on and handsome as well.

   A more macabre exercise in historical reconstruction follows the fate of those who, on the eve of the Great War, scrawled their names on the plaster of the ‘thunder box’—the toilet next to the dark house.

   There are basically three types of toilets in provincial and national parks. The first are the pit toilets—"thunderboxes"—boxes painted white inside, centrally located in various sections of the campground. The second type of toilet looks like a thunderbox but houses an odour-free flushing toilet.

   He [John Blashford-Snell] boobytrapped the ‘thunderbox’ and the next guardsman who sat down was met by a deafening blast. The guardsman and plastic loo seat were hurled one way, the loo paper another, but there were no injuries.

   And finally he pointed to an old thunderbox and shovel. 'Our toilet block.' Everyone except Fly stared at that old thunderbox like it was from Mars.

   More examples (1)

   We did not have any toilet facilities inside the building. However, after searching, we found small groups of thunderboxes over pits down on the slope in front of the building. These lonely thunderboxes had no protection from the weather, not even a hessian screen.

3. A box of metal balls which is shaken to create a thunder sound effect.

   Synonyms

   thunder run

   Examples

   [T]wo articles, both indispensibly necessary to a theatre, are not blundered, viz. a property room, and thunder box!—no they are omitted altogether!!

   More examples (4)

   [H]e [the English actor West Digges] said, "Take the child to the slips;" and I was led through the carpenter's gallery, the cloudings and thunder boxes, and placed in a good seat, where I saw the play with great delight.

   It was what is called a good passage, and a feather in the Casco’s cap; but among the most miserable forty hours that any one of us had ever passed. We were swung and tossed together all that time like shot in a stage thunder-box.

   The pouring and pattering of rain and the beating of hail require four different contrivances. The most novel of these is a wooden box, about twelve feet long and six inches square, inside of which are numerous slanting sheets of tin, punctured with small holes. A number of peas are rushed continuously up and down the box, rolling over the punctured tin and tumbling from one sheet to the other in a manner like that described of the iron balls in the "thunder box."

   Thundercrashes, on the other hand, are made by a number of barrel strakes, suspended above one another on a rope to one side of the stage. At a given signal they are allowed to drop to the floor with a crash, followed by loud peal of thunder from the thunderbox.

Noun

1. A blunderbuss; also, a cannon.

   Usage

   • Obsolete

   Examples

   In the year 1346, at the battle of Crecy, the engliſh uſed a ſort of cannons, which were then called thunder-boxes.

   More examples (1)

   […] I saw Arnoldi at Dettelbach, standing unhurt amongst the lances and swords, which flashed and glittered around him like lightning; the thunder-boxes peppering away all the while as if it snowed lead; and when the pastime (for it was nothing else to him) was over, there he stood leaning on his halbert, coolly shaking out the bullets, which rattled like peas from his breeches and doublet.