chocolate-box

American  

[chaw-kuh-lit-boks, chok-uh-, chawk-lit-, chok-] / ˈtʃɔ kə lɪtˌbɒks, ˈtʃɒk ə-, ˈtʃɔk lɪt-, ˈtʃɒk- /

adjective

1. excessively decorative and sentimental, as the pictures or designs on some boxes of chocolate candy; prettified.

   decorous, chocolate-box paintings of Victorian garden parties.

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chocolate-box British  

noun

1. informal (modifier) sentimentally pretty or appealing

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Etymology

Origin of chocolate-box

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

The next morning, I head back to the cathedral through Petite France, perhaps the most chocolate-box part of this wonderfully preserved city.

From Washington Post • Jan. 25, 2018

On a street of chocolate-box Georgian houses in Bloomsbury, the Charles Dickens Museum will reopen in time for the author’s 200th birthday.

From New York Times • Jan. 6, 2012

Most of the money came from visitors to the chocolate-box 16th-century house, her favourite home, where she died in 1928.

From The Guardian • Mar. 11, 2011

The 1,436-sq-km national park is less touristy than the Yorkshire Dales, and contains chocolate-box villages and dramatic coastline as well as great stretches of moorland inhabited only by sheep.

From Time • Jun. 17, 2010

Holding the chocolate-box and his umbrella under one arm and the bouquet in his other hand, this best of brothers paced that eligible promenade, the platform of the Haymarket station.

From The Prodigal Father by Clouston, J. Storer (Joseph Storer)