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''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

Printed 2026-09-02.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

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: ↩

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