chocolate-box

[ chaw-kuh-lit-boks, chok-uh-, chawk-lit-, chok- ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

adjective

excessively decorative and sentimental, as the pictures or designs on some boxes of chocolate candy; prettified:
decorous, chocolate-box paintings of Victorian garden parties.

chocolate-box

First recorded in 1890–95

No, mark you, he'd take jolly good care that his sentimentality didn't make him see her as a chocolate-box picture!

After all these weeks you're going to throw me away like an old chocolate-box.

Like that, like that, at any rate, she no longer looked like the picture on a chocolate-box.

Not strictly beautiful, perhaps; but then I don't like the chocolate-box sort of woman.

Annabel had wriggled off the sofa and was pointing to a gay chocolate box on the mahogany wash-stand that served as a sideboard.

April 25, 2024firkin

[fur-kin ]

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