box office

See also: box-office

English

A theatrical box office

A cinema box office

Alternative forms

• box-office
• boxoffice (less common)

Etymology

1786, presumably from sales of boxes, box seats (“separated private seating”). Sense of “total sales” from 1904.

Folk etymology is that this derives from Elizabethan theatre, where theater admission was collected in a box attached to a long stick, passed around the audience. However, first attestation is over a century later (theaters were closed in 1642), making this highly unlikely.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs/
• (US) enPR: bäksʹä'fĭs, bäksʹô'fĭs, IPA^(key): /ˈbɑksˌɑfɪs/, /ˈbɑksˌɔfɪs/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Noun

box office (countable and uncountable, plural box offices)

1. (countable, film, theater) A place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema.
2. (uncountable, by extension, film) The total amount of money paid by people worldwide to watch a movie at cinemas/movie theaters.
   • 2005, Barry Day, Coward on Film: The Cinema of Noël Coward, page 88:

     If any further insurance was required, the popularity of the three "Topper" films in the 1930s — based on Thorne Smith's characters — would seem to indicate that amusing ghosts made good box office.

3. (uncountable) Quality of an entertainment or spectacle that makes it very popular with the public, or likely to be so.

   His performance last night was pure box office.

Derived terms

Derived terms

• box-office bomb
• poison at the box office

Related terms

• ticket office, booking office ticket window (for train, bus)

Translations

ticket office

• Armenian: տոմսարկղ (hy) (tomsarkġ)
• Catalan: taquilla (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 票房 (zh) (piàofáng), 售票處／售票处 (zh) (shòupiàochù)

• Finnish: lippukassa, lippumyymälä
• French: billetterie (fr) f, guichet (fr) m
• Galician: bileteira f
• German: Schalter (de) m, Kasse (de) f
• Greek: ταμείο (el) n (tameío)
• Hungarian: jegypénztár (hu)
• Icelandic: miðasala (is) f
• Italian: biglietteria (it) f, botteghino (it) m
• Japanese: 切符売場 (きっぷうりば, kippu uriba), 出札所 (しゅっさつじょ, shussatsujo)
• Macedonian: билета́рница f (biletárnica), ка́са f (kása)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: billettkontor n

  Nynorsk: billettkontor n

• Portuguese: bilheteria (pt) f
• Romanian: casă de bilete f
• Russian: биле́тная ка́сса f (bilétnaja kássa), ка́сса (ru) f (kássa), бу́дка (ru) f (búdka) (билетёра)
• Spanish: taquilla (es) f
• Swedish: biljettkassa (sv) c
• Tagalog: takilya
• Turkish: gişe (tr)

See also

• cume
• will call

References

• “Re: Box office, box seat”, The Phrase Finder, ESC, March 22, 2002

Further reading

• “box office”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “box office”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “box office”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “box office”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.