idiot box

noun

: television

Synonyms

• boob tube
• box
• television
• telly [chiefly British]
• tube
• TV

Examples of idiot box in a Sentence

she declared that she wouldn't have an idiot box in her home

Recent Examples on the Web

Writers strove to position themselves as more cynical than the idiot box that knew itself to be an idiot box. —Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 27 Feb. 2025

But make no mistake: Sunday’s game was over well before K-Dot started rapping about silencing the idiot box. —Anthony Crupi, Sportico.com, 3 Sep. 2019

Hayes, who works in TV, treats TikTok wholly as something to watch—an algorithmically individualized idiot box. —Daniel Immerwahr, The New Yorker, 20 Jan. 2025

Column: Streamers profited when ‘the idiot box’ became art. —Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, 11 Jan. 2024

All that, somehow, without Truman himself ever switching on the idiot box. —Armond White, National Review, 2 Aug. 2023

Television Column: Streamers profited when ‘the idiot box’ became art. —Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2023

But the idiot box has also inspired arguably his worst projects, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Newsroom, sanctimonious and stupefyingly self-serious accounts of the woes of content creation. —Jason Bailey, Vulture, 21 Dec. 2021

All those childhood years in front of the idiot box could now be considered research — a lifetime of training, cleverly disguised as sloth. —Washington Post, 29 Dec. 2020

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1955, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for idiot box

• aftershocks
• chatterbox
• equinox
• goldilocks
• hollyhocks
• interlocks
• orthodox
• paradox
• tomahawks
• balks
• blocks
• blocs