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• shadow box
  shadow box

  noun

  a shallow, rectangular frame fronted with a glass panel, used to show and at the same time protect items on display, as paintings, coins, or jewelry.
• shadow-box
  shadow-box

  verb

  boxing to practise blows and footwork against an imaginary opponent

shadow box

American  

noun

1. a shallow, rectangular frame fronted with a glass panel, used to show and at the same time protect items on display, as paintings, coins, or jewelry.

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shadow-box British  

verb

1. boxing to practise blows and footwork against an imaginary opponent

2. to act or speak unconvincingly, without saying what one means, etc

   he's just shadow-boxing

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Other Word Forms

• shadow-boxing
  noun

Etymology

Origin of shadow box

First recorded in 1905–10

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

shadow box shadow-box

“They were beautiful and funny and fascinating,” Saar says of Cornell’s shadow box assemblages, many of which were made of repurposed junk.

From New York Times ● May 8, 2024

All the while, Ryder continued to shadow box and wait patiently.

From BBC ● May 7, 2023

The shop now displays Edwards’s neatly folded navy-blue work uniform, “The Pen Doctor” embroidered on its front, in a shadow box by his repair bench.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 14, 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

The big stones formed a sort of shadow box, causing the markings to appear in bold relief.

From Tom Slade on Mystery Trail by R. Emmett (Robert Emmett) Owen

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

Elad Lassry puts together studio set-ups, of eggs, fruit and existing photographs, and completes his Pop version of Joseph Cornellian neatness by encasing the final picture in a shadow-box frame.

From New York Times ● Dec. 3, 2015

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