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 noun

a shoebox apartment

Since commercial real estate was cheaper, art galleries and Off Off Off Broadway theaters could spring up in shoebox storefronts.

—James Wolcott

Examples of shoebox in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Parked outside the Charlotte Dowd YMCA, Antoine Turner reached into the backseat of his Chevrolet Camaro, past his five-year-old daughter and toward a Nike shoebox. —Julia Coin, Charlotte Observer, 22 Jan. 2026

The camera recorded him finding the benefit card in a shoebox in the living room and placing it next to the revolver once the safe was opened in a back bedroom, prosecutors said. —Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News, 21 Jan. 2026

His jars go into a shoebox, one for hot-weather crops, one for cool-weather crops. —Erica Browne Grivas, Better Homes & Gardens, 20 Jan. 2026

Imagine the Los Angeles sports landscape in a shoebox, with most of it focused in the downtown area with the Lakers and the Dodgers. —Los Angeles Times, 12 Jan. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1838, in the meaning defined at sense 1