boob tube

American  

noun

Informal.

1. television.

2. a television set.

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boob tube British  

noun

1. a close-fitting strapless top, worn by women

2. a strapless, boneless, shapeless brassiere made of a stretch fabric

3. a television receiver

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Etymology

Origin of boob tube

First recorded in 1965–70; rhyming coinage, from the notion that television programming is foolish, induces foolishness, or is watched by foolish people

Example Sentences

That, and she nails one of the film’s most vivid, appallingly funny feats of physical performance: panicked and oblivious, running her daughter to school in a blood-stained boob tube and precarious go-go boots.

From The Guardian • Jan. 9, 2020

Your friendly neighborhood comic and commentator marks a quarter-century of snarking and smirking on the boob tube on very special episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 12, 2018

“Television, instead of the boob tube, is going to be ‘I know you’ tube.”

From New York Times • Oct. 26, 2016

Then, in 1983, Armstrong and the writer Jack Mingo published “The Official Couch Potato Handbook,” a mock guide, very much of its time, to slouching proudly in front of the boob tube.

From The New Yorker • Jul. 6, 2016

But anyway, Seferino Pacheco occasionally visited Onofre’s house, not to hear him play the piano—God forbid!—but simply to stare at Onofre’s miraculous boob tube, and also occasionally to listen to his friend read.

From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols