Pepperbox

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A pepper shaker.
  2. 2
    A repeating firearm with three or more barrels grouped around a central axis.

    "She had her knees up, resting her wrists on them; the pepperbox muzzle of a flechette pistol emerged from her hands."

  3. 3
    A buttress at one side of the court in the game of fives.
  4. 4
    A tower capped by a cupola, looking similar to a giant pepper shaker.

    "Large, stately, and dark was its [the château's] outline against the dusky night-sky; there were pepper-boxes and tourelles and what-not fantastically going up into the dim starlight."

  5. 5
    Any of the buildings of the Royal Academy and National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, having cupolas on the roof. in-plural, slang

    "I also remember the old Royal Mews that stood on the site of the present trumpery National Gallery, with its too suggestive pepper-boxes; […]"

Example

More examples

"She had her knees up, resting her wrists on them; the pepperbox muzzle of a flechette pistol emerged from her hands."

Etymology

From pepper + box.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.