Victorian-era British slang for a coffin, playing on the grim logic that a coffin is, in the most literal sense, a box for cold meat. The phrase belongs to the dark, unsentimental vocabulary of 19th century street and working-class slang, where death was a frequent enough presence that blunt humor was a coping mechanism. 'Cold-meat box' has the same deadpan morbidity as other period euphemisms for coffins, and it shows up in penny dreadfuls and historical crime writing.
The undertaker measured him up with professional calm and muttered something about needing a wider cold-meat box than usual.
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(UK, slang, obsolete) A coffin.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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