[BOX sb.2]
† 1. A box with materials for procuring fire, a tinder-box. Obs.
1555. Eden, Decades (Arb.), 320. Euery man caryeth with hym A hatchet, A fyre boxe, and a brasen potte: so that if they chaunce to coomme to any place where they can fynde no frutes, garlyke, onyons or flesshe, they kyndle a fyre and fylle theyr pottes with water wherunto they put a spoonefull of meale with a quantitie of salte, and make pottage therof, wherwith the master and all hys seruauntes lyue contented.
1806–7. J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life (1826), Posthumous Groans, No. 43. (T.) Comforts of a fire-box; to wit:—The sudden and everlasting antipathy, that succeeds to a momentary sympathy, between the match, and the phosphorus,….. notwithstanding all your active efforts in bringing them together.
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xlvii. He carried in his pocket, too, a fire-box of mysterious and unknown construction.
† 2. A kind of firework. Obs.
1634. J. Bate, Myst. Nat. & Art, II. 75–6. How to make fire Boxes…. In these boxes you may put golden rayne, starres, serpents, petrars, fiends, devils.
3. The chamber of a steam-boiler in which the fuel is burnt.
1830. Stephenson & Locke, Locomotive & Fixed Engines, 65. These wheels are 4 feet 8 inches in diameter; those on which the ‘fire-box’ rests are only 2 feet 6 inches.
1887. J. A. Ewing, in Encycl. Brit. (ed. 9), XXII. 516/1. The boiler—which serves as the frame of the engine—is fitted with a cast-iron internal fire-box, with a vertical flue which is traversed by a water-bridge.
