# squeeze box
## English
### Alternative forms

* squeezebox

### Etymology

From squeeze +‎ box.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈskwiːzbɒks/
* (General American) IPA: /ˈskwizbɑks/
* Audio (General Australian):(file)

### Noun

squeeze box (plural squeeze boxes)
* (music, informal) An accordion or concertina.
** 1975 November, Pete Townshend (lyrics and music), “Squeeze Box”, in The Who by Numbers, performed by The Who:Mama's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest. / From when Daddy comes home, he never gets no rest. / Because she's playing all night, and the music's all right.
** 1980, Louis Nowra, “Inside the Island”, in Helen Gilbert, editor, Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology, Abingdon, Oxon., New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2001, →ISBN, page 291:(Pause. peter picks up his squeeze box.) / peter I sing with this. / george A concertina. / peter No, it's a squeeze box. Can you play it? / george I love music, but can't play a thing.
** 1999, James P. Leary, “Polka Music in a Polka State”, in James P. Leary, editor, Wisconsin Folklore, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, →ISBN, page 279:Like the "concertina oompah" phase of the Dutchman style, the Slovenian polka sound emphasizes skill with a squeezebox.
** 2002, Howard Jacobson, chapter 2, in Who's Sorry Now?, London: Jonathan Cape, ISBN 978-0-224-06286-2; republished London: Vintage Books, 2003, ISBN 978-0-09-943737-6, page 29:
    Intoxicating, the cheap Moroccan wallets, squashed and flattened in their elasticated dozens, which he eased apart like squeeze-boxes, releasing their scent of oxhide, of urine, of all the dyes and spices of the kasbah.
** 2003, Cliff Eisen, quoting Antonio Salieri, “Mozart’s Chamber Music”, in Simon P. Keefe, editor, The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 105:It [Serenade for Winds in B Flat Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart] started simply enough: just a pulse in the lowest registers – bassoons and basset horns – like a rusty squeezebox. It would have been comic except for the slowness, which gave it instead a sort of serenity. […] But the squeezebox went on and on, and the pain cut deeper into my shaking head, until suddenly I was running, dashing through the side door, stumbling downstairs into the street, into the cold night, gasping for life.
** 2006, Richard March, “Polka”, in Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, Andrew [R. L.] Cayton, editors, The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 388, column 1:Squeezeboxes are essential instruments in most polka traditions, especially the button accordion, the piano accordion, and the Chemnitzer concertina. […] Manufacture and sale of squeezeboxes made the instruments widely accessible at a time when polkas were all the rage. The squeezebox-polka association remains. A majority of polka bands use an accordion or concertina.
** 2010, Dan M[ichael] Worrall, “The Concertina at Sea”, in The Anglo-German Concertina: A Social History, 3rd edition, volume 1, Fulshear, Tx.: Concertina Press, →ISBN, page 324, column 2:Memories held by an older generation faded—memories of concertinas used in twilight dances on deck under a tropical sky or of Royal Navy soldiers dancing a hornpipe to its sound—and succeeding generations saw only Captain Pugwash’s “Tom the Cabin Boy,” fictional Disney pirates, and Tinseltown crooners with fake squeezeboxes.
* (caving) A box with an adjustable opening used by cavers to practise crawling through tight spaces.
** 1998 July, Andrew Todhunter, “Dark Passage: Descending into the Depths of California’s Longest Known Cave”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 282, number 1, archived from the original on 21 September 2015, pages 90–94; reprinted in Dangerous Games: Ice Climbing, Storm Kayaking, and other Adventures from the Extreme Edge of Sports, 1st Anchor Books edition, New York, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Random House, November 2001, →ISBN, pages 61–62:
    At caving conventions aboveground, cavers often squirrel themselves through adjustable wooden "squeeze boxes" in good-natured competitions. In the safety of this controlled setting, cavers may push their capacities far beyond what they might hazard underground; […] A very slender woman's tightest squeeze may be defined by the width of her skull turned sideways. Some women thus emerge from squeeze boxes, triumphant, with mirrored abrasions over their cheekbones.
** 2003, Barbara Hurd, “The Squeeze”, in Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling through the Dark, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 11:The most notorious squeezes have names: the Gun Barrel, Jam Crack, the Electric Armpit Crawl, Devil's Pinch. You can even train for them by buying a product called a Squeeze Box. It's essentially a play torture chamber for cavers, a wooden box, about thirty by thirty inches, open on the two ends. You set it up in your living room, get down on your hands and knees, and crawl through it. No problem. But the box has adjustable sides and top. You loosen the bolts, lower the lid, slide the sides closer, crawl through again. […] Though a Squeeze Box may be good practice for learning how to squinch through small places, doing it on your living room carpet, […] just doesn't duplicate what causes the panic.
** 2016, Diego Rodriguez, The Caver: Dig ... But Not to Far, Munich: BookRix, →ISBN:Prior to going back out to Mystery Cave again we spent a lot of time preparing. We made a squeeze box, which is a wooden box the opening of which can be adjusted in size. We could then crawl through the opening and measure to see how tight of a squeeze we could fit through.
* (veterinary medicine) A container that fits tightly around an animal to immobilize it for medical treatment, transportation, etc.
** 1963, Ann Cottrell Free, Forever the Wild Mare, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead and Company, →OCLC:Jebby rushed to the area behind the mare's paddock. What he saw there filled him with fresh concern. Isabella was in the "squeeze box." This, he knew, was a strait jacket for animals! […] He had seen the old squeeze box sitting in the field behind the hoofed animals' paddock. Zoo keepers had used it in the days before the invention of the Tranquilizer Gun for immobilizing animals when they wanted to inoculate them or treat them for illness or injury. If the squeeze box were used unwisely, a Zoo keeper had told Jebby, an animal inside it could be squeezed almost to death. And it always caused panic as the wooden sides pressed against the trapped creature's body.
** 2001, Pamela Tuomi, “Sea Otters”, in Leslie A. Dierauf, Frances M. D. Gulland, editors, CRC Handbook of Marine Mammal Medicine: Health, Disease, and Rehabilitation, 2nd edition, Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, →ISBN, page 972:Williams and Sawyer (1995) reported on successful techniques used on a large number of otters in the rehabilitation centers during the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Restraint equipment included heavy leather welder's gloves with long sleeves, a large salmon dip net fitted with an elongated bag of soft 1-in. mesh net, a throw net, blankets, stuff bags, and some sort of squeeze box. […] The bag is quickly placed over the head, shoulders, and thorax, and the otter is held by pressing down on the bag. This is best accomplished while the otter is in the net or squeeze box with the animal on its back and the hind legs held by a second handler […].
** 2012, Mercedes S. Foster, “Dealing with Live Reptiles”, in Roy W. McDiarmid et al., editors, Reptile Biodiversity: Standard Methods for Inventory and Monitoring, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 132:Snakes and beaded lizards can be measured effectively in a "squeeze box" (Quinn and Jones 1974). A squeeze box immobilizes an animal by pressing it between a transparent lid and a soft foam bottom. Squeeze boxes have diverse designs […], but basically, they are all modifications of the original described by Quinn and Jones (1974).
** 2014, Darryl Heard, “Lagomorphs (Rabbits, Hares, and Pikas)”, in Gary [Don] West, Darryl [J.] Heard, Nigel Caulkett, editors, Zoo Animal and Wildlife Immobilization and Anesthesia, 2nd edition, Ames, Iowa: Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN, page 879:Physical restraint devices (e.g., rabbit squeezeboxes and cat bags) are a useful adjunct to anesthesia, particularly in the induction period. Restrained rabbits quickly develop hyperthermia, however, especially when environmental temperatures are high. Physical restraint of free-living rabbits and hares should be minimal.
* Synonym of hugbox (“a therapeutic device”).

#### Derived terms

* (musical instrument): squeezeboxer

#### Further reading

* squeeze box on Wikipedia.Wikipedia