jawbox
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English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From jaw + box. In old tenements usually placed next to the kitchen window, enabling housewives to talk ("jaw") to each other across the tenement courtyard while doing washing up.
Noun
[edit]jawbox (plural jawboxes)
- (Scotland, dated) A tenement sink.
- Synonym: jaw-hole
- 1983, Bernard MacLaverty, Cal (chapter 3, p.90 in the 1998 Vintage paperback edition)
- After a week he had to accept that he was growing a black beard, not because he wanted one, but because he could think of no way of shaving. There was a jaw-box in the tiny kitchen but no taps.
- 2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 5:
- She snatches towels from the laundry basket — two, three, four —soaks them at the jawbox sink and lays them along the bottom of the kitchen door.