the.com/matchbox
a pocket-sized box that promised to carry fire before phones carried everything else
means A small box, usually cardboard, that holds matches and has a rough striking strip on its side.
from A plain compound of "match" plus "box." "Match" comes from Old French "meiche," the wick or lamp-cord, ultimately from Latin "myxa" (the nozzle of a lamp, borrowed from Greek for "lamp wick"); it long meant the slow-burning cord used to fire cannons before it settled, in the 19th century, on the little friction sticks we know today. "Box" is much older still, traced to Latin "buxus," the boxwood tree, from whose wood small containers were once carved. So the word literally pairs a wick-name with a tree-name to mean "the little wooden-named box of fire-sticks."
- toy empire
- Matchbox cars were sized to fit actual matchboxes
- collector gold
- Rare vintage matchboxes sell for thousands
- safety trick
- Striking surface holds red phosphorus, not the matches
- phillumeny
- Collecting matchbox labels is a real named hobby
- hidden ad
- Matchbooks were once America's cheapest advertising space
matchbox twenty — american rock band formed in 1996, named after a matchbox with 20 matches
matchbox cars — toy car brand by mattel launched in 1953, originally sold in matchbox-sized boxes