What does "sweatbox" mean?

Any box or boxlike structure used to induce sweating, such as of hides or tobacco

What is a synonym for "sweatbox"?

Common synonyms include: jail cell, jail cell.

noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Noun

1
Any box or boxlike structure used to induce sweating, such as of hides or tobacco
"Australia Post has been accused of endangering staff with "sweatbox" uniforms and restricting earlier starts to save money."
2
a device that causes tobacco leaves or fruit or hides to sweat wordnet
3
A jail cell. US, slang
4
small or narrow cell wordnet
5
A compartment in a police van to hold a prisoner being transported. UK, slang
"They shoved me in the back of a police van and started driving to the cop shop. I was sitting in the sweatbox, wondering how the Dibble had got onto me so quickly, when I heard a voice from another section of the van say, 'Are you P from Macclesfield?'"

Show 4 more definitions

6
A small overheated cell or room used for solitary confinement or torture.
"In the summer of 1945, one young boy died of heart failure while locked in a sweatbox, a popular corrective at that time."
7
A small nightclub packed to capacity where people get hot and sweaty. slang
8
The room where a scene is reviewed.
9
The review process that takes place in a sweat box.

Verb

1
To place (a person) in a jail cell or a police van compartment. slang, transitive
2
To review (work) in the designated room for such reviews. transitive

"Australia Post has been accused of endangering staff with "sweatbox" uniforms and restricting earlier starts to save money."

From sweat + box.

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