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.
But here he was, on stage at the Potomac Ballroom, his photograph trapped in a shadow box half the size of the portrait of Donald Trump hanging above.
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
In an upstairs office, they keep a shadow box filled with ribbons and articles, highlighted by a July 2012 Swimming World Magazine profile with a smiling Marciano, braces and all.
From New York Times ● Aug. 18, 2021
The big stones formed a sort of shadow box, causing the markings to appear in bold relief.
From Tom Slade on Mystery Trail by Owen, R. Emmett (Robert Emmett)
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
He begins to shadow-box, as if in Brooklyn rather than Bricket Wood.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 9, 2017
“Pavlova’s Dawg” also functions as a fine pivot between Vincent Fecteau’s shadow-box collage and Charles Ray’s stack of bricks lashed with a thick rope to a well-used sawhorse.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2016
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
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.
