''pepperbox'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260902143140-00-⌔

pepperbox - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

pepperbox (plural pepperboxes)

• A pepper shaker.
• (firearms) 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.¹
• A buttress at one side of the court in the game of fives.
• (architecture) 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.²
• (architecture, slang, chiefly in the plural) Any of the buildings of the Royal Academy and National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, having cupolas on the roof.
  • ✤ I also remember the old Royal Mews that stood on the site of the present trumpery National Gallery, with its too suggestive pepper-boxes; […]³
  • ✤ Its architect, Wilkins, had the misfortune to be chosen to erect our much-abused National Gallery building, with its condemned “pepper-boxes” of cupolas; […]⁴

Etymology

From pepper +‎ box.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-09-02.

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Footnotes

1. 1984, William Gibson, Neuromancer (Sprawl; book 1), New York, N.Y.: Ace Books, →ISBN, page 21: ↩

2. 1861, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Grey Woman: ↩

3. 1887, Charles Mackay, Through the Long Day: Or, Memorials of a Literary Life, page 113: ↩

4. 2012, Edward Verrall Lucas, Highways and Byways in London: ↩