shoebox
noun
shoe·box
ˈshü-ˌbäks 
variants
or less commonly shoe box
1
: a box that shoes are sold in
a shoebox full of old photographs
2
: a small space and especially a small living space
The loft, almost an hour from her house by tube, is a shoebox with 18-foot ceilings, white and blue, with odds and ends of mismatched furniture …—
Michael Kimmelman
—often used before another nounMichael Kimmelmana shoebox apartment
Since commercial real estate was cheaper, art galleries and Off Off Off Broadway theaters could spring up in shoebox storefronts.—James Wolcott
James WolcottExamples of shoebox in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The Department of Education building is ugly in a distinctly Washington way—a concrete shoebox more suggestive of bureaucratic toil than of any grand vision of government.
—Emma Green, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 2025
But don’t kid yourself, this thing is about as aerodynamic as a shoebox taped to a cinder block.
—New Atlas, 27 Sep. 2025
Germany will present the world’s first code-deployable biological computer, no larger than a shoebox, at a first-class networking summit dedicated to the future of biointelligent value creation.
—Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 26 Sep. 2025
The company’s smaller sized safes, which begin at $1,350 per year and are the size of a semi-flattened shoebox, are all currently occupied.
—Kati Chitrakorn, CNN Money, 17 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for shoebox
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Emma Green, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 2025
But don’t kid yourself, this thing is about as aerodynamic as a shoebox taped to a cinder block.
—New Atlas, 27 Sep. 2025
Germany will present the world’s first code-deployable biological computer, no larger than a shoebox, at a first-class networking summit dedicated to the future of biointelligent value creation.
—Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering, 26 Sep. 2025
The company’s smaller sized safes, which begin at $1,350 per year and are the size of a semi-flattened shoebox, are all currently occupied.
—Kati Chitrakorn, CNN Money, 17 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for shoebox
Cite this Entry
“Shoebox.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shoebox. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.
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