horsebox
Pluralhorseboxes
- 1A motor vehicle built for carrying horses from place to place.
She drove the horsebox to the cross-country event at dawn.
A muddy horsebox stood parked beside the stable yard.
- 2A container for carrying horses, whether by road, rail, or sea.
The horsebox was hoisted aboard the freighter alongside other livestock containers.
Railway workers secured each horsebox to the flatbed before departure.
- 3A van-type railway vehicle constructed specifically for the carriage of horses.
Stable hands walked the hunters up the ramp into the horsebox before the train departed for the meet.
The station master shunted the horsebox onto a siding to await the next service.
Note
A word from the days when horses traveled by train, and now obsolete in this sense. In railway writing it combines with other nouns: Trains Illustrated in January 1960 reports a Holyhead–Didcot "horsebox special," a special train carrying them. Today a British reader pictures the road vehicle instead, so modern prose needs railway context, such as a siding or a locomotive, to call up this sense.
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Origin
A compound of "horse" and "box".