Box office
A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the film industry, as a metonym for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives. The term is also used to refer to a ticket office at an arena or a stadium.[1]
Etymology
[edit]Ceramic money boxes were used at the sixteenth-century Globe Theatre and Rose Theatre in London, where many examples have been found during archaeological investigations. They were possibly used by the "gatherer" at the entrance to the theatres, who collected the admission money. There is disagreement, however, around whether the term originates from this time, as the objects could have been carried by the many snack-sellers attending the audiences; they too needed a convenient and secure way to collect their customers' cash.[a][3]
There is no record of the term "box office" being used until the eighteenth century: it was being used from at least 1741, deriving from the office from which tickets for theatre boxes were sold. This is the derivation favoured by the Oxford English Dictionary.[4]
Related terminology
[edit]Total ticket sales were being termed box office from at least 1904.[4][5]
Notes
[edit]- ^ Thomas Dekker, in his The Gull's Horn Book of 1609, is the first on record to use box in the theatrical sense. He described boxes as: crammed spaces "in the suburbs of the stage" from which to watch a performance.[2]
References
[edit]- ^ "box office". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 2018-10-05.
- ^ Dekker, Thomas (1609). Nott, John (ed.). The Gull's Horn Book (1812 ed.). Bristol: John Gutch. pp. 134–5. OCLC 3162821.
- ^
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Multiple sources:
- Croker, Ollie. "Collecting cash at Shakespeare's plays". London Museum. Retrieved 15 August 2025.
- Hendrickson, Robert (1997). The Facts on File encyclopedia of word and phrase origins. New York: Facts on File. p. 96. ISBN 0-8160-3266-1.
- Appleton, Stephanie (3 May 2013). "Shakespeare in 100 Objects: Money Pot". Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Retrieved 26 May 2024.
- ^ a b "box office". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ Harper, Douglas. "box-office(n.)". etymonline. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
External links
[edit]
- Media related to Box offices at Wikimedia Commons
