box office
/ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs/
"box-office" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“box office” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema.
Corpus desk
Index EN-box-office · box office · English
box office · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | box office |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “box office” in English
Rare enough to double-check
box office is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈbɒksˌɒfɪs/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for box office, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: 1786, presumably from sales of boxes, box seats (“separated private seating”). Sense of “total sales” from 1904. Folk etymology is that this derives from Elizabethan theatre, where theater admission was collected in a box attached to a long stick, passed ar… The correct English form is box office, spelled B-O-X- -O-F-F-I-C-E.
Definition
- 1A place where tickets are sold in a theatre/theater or cinema.
- 2The total amount of money paid by people worldwide to watch a movie at cinemas/movie theaters.
- 3Quality of an entertainment or spectacle that makes it very popular with the public, or likely to be so.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how box office appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
If any further insurance was required, the popularity of the three "Topper" films in the 1930s — based on Thorne Smith's characters — would seem to indicate that amusing ghosts made good box office.
His performance last night was pure box office.
Etymology
1786, presumably from sales of boxes, box seats (“separated private seating”). Sense of “total sales” from 1904. Folk etymology is that this derives from Elizabethan theatre, where theater admission was collected in a box attached to a long stick, passed around the audience. However, the term is first attested over a century later (theaters were closed in 1642), making this highly unlikely.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.