boxing to practise blows and footwork against an imaginary opponent
to act or speak unconvincingly, without saying what one means, etc
he's just shadow-boxing
First recorded in 1905–10
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
On gallery walls painted deep green, purple or gold, she has mounted 15 enormous, vibrant, unremitting square paintings, each framed in a dark shadow box produced in her studio, and even more small drawings.
From New York Times ● Jun. 1, 2023
"It's right up there," Rojas told us, "encased in the beautiful shadow box."
From Salon ● Mar. 11, 2023
The photos sit in a sort of shadow box with the glass covering looking almost as if it has been pressed outward and fractured.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 18, 2022
An hour or so before the first bell, some fighters might pace up and down in the dressing room, others will shadow box to counteract that nervous energy.
From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2021
A prominent aid to my artistic whims came to me by way of my father's love and craftsmanship; he spent hours of his spare time constructing a shadow box for miniature arrangements.
From Through these Eyes The courageous struggle to find meaning in a life stressed with cancer by Isaacson, Lauren Ann
Finley’s piece arranges ceramic vessels inside shadow-box shelving that the artist describes as containers for memory — some “you love to take out and peek into,” others that “should just stay shut forever.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2026
Each child will invent a brief tale about shapes, which will become paper characters in a shadow-box theater.
From New York Times ● Apr. 30, 2020
An appraiser sized it up as folk art by Joseph Cornell, one of his famed shadow-box displays, and worth up to $150,000 at auction if authenticated.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 1, 2013
You can shadow-box with Ali and have his boxer daughter Laita teach you dad's shuffle, in the ring.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 30, 2010
I could not shadow-box in front of the narrow long mirror at first because it looked so strange to see a man with a beard boxing.
From "A Farewell To Arms" by Ernest Hemingway
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
