icebox
Americannoun
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an insulated cabinet or chest with a partition for ice, used for preserving or cooling food, beverages, etc.
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Older Use. an electric or gas refrigerator.
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Nautical. an enclosed area in the bottom of a vessel through which sea water can be pumped up for use in the condenser in icy waters.
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Slang. an isolation cell in a prison.
noun
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a compartment in a refrigerator for storing or making ice
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an insulated cabinet packed with ice for storing food
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a refrigerator
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of icebox
Explanation
Icebox is an old-fashioned word for "refrigerator." Better get those bottles the milkman left on the porch and put them in the icebox — it's hot outside! Before the invention of electric refrigerators in the early 20th century, people used iceboxes to keep their perishable food chilled. These insulated cabinets evolved from outdoor ice houses, which continued to be useful for storing the ice used in kitchen iceboxes. An "iceman" would deliver fresh ice daily or weekly, and it would remain frozen inside the wooden, metal-lined icebox long enough to keep food safe. Icebox is also used regionally to refer to the modern fridge.
Vocabulary lists containing icebox
Chapter 23: Rise to World Power
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Turtle in Paradise
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Vocabulary from Readings 3, Unit 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Parpart wasn’t the first to do this; in 1913, Fred W. Wolf patented an electric refrigerator that consisted of a refrigeration unit placed on top of an icebox.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 2026
Miraculously, the line of people that usually snakes down Melrose yearning for a slice of chef Karla Subero Pittol’s passion lime fruit icebox pie is nonexistent today.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2026
Airport authorities and police seized six pieces of rhinoceros horn and around 12 kilograms of unidentified meat used to conceal them inside a polystyrene icebox.
From Barron's ● Feb. 10, 2026
There’s something about an icebox cake that feels like a relic from another life — one with hand-labeled Tupperware and block parties and the kind of ambition that fits in a 9×13.
From Salon ● Jul. 29, 2025
You took the dish towel hanging off the icebox handle and wiped off your sister.”
From "One Crazy Summer" by Rita Williams-Garcia
Before electric refrigeration, households relied on iceboxes, which required frequent deliveries of heavy blocks of ice, constant draining of meltwater and careful food planning to avoid spoilage.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 2026
They then numbered and packed the samples so they could be carried down the mountain in iceboxes and then transferred via four-wheel-drive vehicles to refrigerated trucks further down the mountain.
From Barron's ● Nov. 7, 2025
The so-called "iceboxes", notorious among migrants, are extremely cold rooms or cubicles in US Border Patrol migrant processing facilities.
From BBC ● May 23, 2021
Refrigerated railroad cars and in-home iceboxes meant that vegetables were now available in winter, and not just turnips.
From New York Times ● May 13, 2016
Most folks still thought a bathroom inside the house was unnecessary, expensive, maybe even unsanitary, though Aunt Pretty sighed a lot when she read about big-city houses with indoor plumbing and wringer washers and iceboxes.
From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.