box and cox

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Box and Cox.

Verb[edit]

box and cox (third-person singular simple present boxes and coxes, present participle boxing and coxing, simple past and past participle boxed and coxed)

  1. (transitive, intransitive, UK) To alternate with each other, often in the same post or location.
    • 2014 November 26, Richard Pasco – obituary, The Daily Telegraph[1]:
      If any single production staked his claim to greatness it was John Barton’s 1973 RSC production of Richard II, in which Pasco and Ian Richardson boxed and coxed the roles of the King and Bolingbroke.
  2. (transitive, intransitive, UK) To alternate between two people.
    • 2007 April 14, Giles Foden, “The long and the short of it: Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann”, in The Guardian[2]:
      Although he meets von Humboldt by the end of the first chapter, it will take the whole book for there to be a meeting of minds between these two giants of the German intellect, with Kehlmann boxing and coxing between the two chapter by chapter.