Dictionary

pepperbox en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Etymology

From pepper + box.

Meanings

1. A pepper shaker.
2. A repeating firearm with three or more barrels grouped around a central axis.
   • She had her knees up, resting her wrists on them; the pepperbox muzzle of a flechette pistol emerged from her hands. 1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 21:
3. A buttress at one side of the court in the game of fives.
4. A tower capped by a cupola, looking similar to a giant pepper shaker.
   • Large, stately, and dark was its [the château's] outline against the dusky night-sky; there were pepper-boxes and tourelles and what-not fantastically going up into the dim starlight. 1861, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Grey Woman:
5. (in-plural, slang) Any of the buildings of the Royal Academy and National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, having cupolas on the roof.
   • Its architect, Wilkins, had the misfortune to be chosen to erect our much-abused National Gallery building, with its condemned "pepper-boxes" of cupolas; […] 2012, Edward Verrall Lucas, Highways and Byways in London:
   • I also remember the old Royal Mews that stood on the site of the present trumpery National Gallery, with its too suggestive pepper-boxes; […] 1887, Charles Mackay, Through the Long Day: Or, Memorials of a Literary Life, page 113:

Forms