false bottom

American  

noun

1. a horizontal partition above the actual bottom of a box, trunk, etc., especially one forming a secret compartment.

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Etymology

Origin of false bottom

First recorded in 1790–1800

Example Sentences

Whitman’s Sampler and the Russell Stover Holiday Season Box with 52 pieces got new packaging and new dimensions that did away with what was, essentially, a false bottom.

From Washington Post • Feb. 10, 2023

To see whether the jellyfish were really asleep, they built a false bottom to the aquarium and lowered it—essentially “pulling the rug out” from under the creatures.

From Science Magazine • Oct. 27, 2021

The novel opens as she discovers, under a false bottom in her mother’s trunk, a decades-old journal kept by a man named Francis Aggrey, the father she’s never known.

From New York Times • Oct. 5, 2021

"Maybe it was a false bottom," Iannetta said.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 18, 2015

Sometimes gold was hidden in a wand with a false bottom, to appear miraculously in a crucible at the end of some arduous experimental demonstration.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan