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drinking box
DCHP-2 (Oct 2016)
n. — Food & Drink
a box formed of paper, polyethylene, and aluminum foil for holding liquid (juice, milk, wine), often with an attached straw.
Type: 2. Preservation — This term is a Canadian preservation. In noun compounds whose first element is an -ing form, the tendency can be seen to drop the -ing. This happened for, e.g. dumping truck > dump truck in the early years of the 20th century (Dollinger 2015b: 181-183). Some forms show regional variation, e.g. sailing boat in Britain, whereas sail boat is more common in North America (ibid.). Drinking box appears to be a Canadian preservation that used to be more common elsewhere, holding on to an older word-formation pattern with -ing (see Chart 1).
The term has much higher frequency in Canada than in the US, where drink box or some other terms, such as juice box, are more common (see Charts 1 and 2). This variable is one of the preservations in Canadian English that make some aspects of CanE more conservative than US varieties. See homo milk for another such preservation. In other aspects, CanE is more progressive than US varieties (see Tagliamonte & D'Arcy 2007: 70, Dollinger 2015a).
See also COD-2, s.v. "drinking box", which is marked "Cdn".
The term has much higher frequency in Canada than in the US, where drink box or some other terms, such as juice box, are more common (see Charts 1 and 2). This variable is one of the preservations in Canadian English that make some aspects of CanE more conservative than US varieties. See homo milk for another such preservation. In other aspects, CanE is more progressive than US varieties (see Tagliamonte & D'Arcy 2007: 70, Dollinger 2015a).
See also COD-2, s.v. "drinking box", which is marked "Cdn".
See: fishboat
Quotations
1983
Soft drinks, aseptic "drinking boxes" of juices and milk, other grocery products, tires, photo equipment - all are now metric and a wide range of industrial products have also been switched.
1986
Aseptic packaging - fruit juices in drinking boxes now have 25%- 30% of the juice market - is being used for items such as gravies, puddings and sauces.
1987
Drink boxes are a wonderful invention [...] but please, buy fruit or vegetable juices, not fruit drinks that are just water, sugar and coloring with a little added vitamin C.
1994
Introduced in 1969 by Sweden's Tetra Pak International AB and in wide use in Canada since 1982, the drinking box has revolutionized the transport and sale of beverages worldwide. A heat-treating process similar to pasteurization sterilizes contents, endowing beverages with a long shelf life (6 months is not uncommon).
1998
Keep it cool: Purchase an insulated lunchbag to help keep food from spoiling during its morning in the cloakroom. Frozen drink boxes and yogurt containers will keep foods cool and will defrost just in time for lunch.
2000
Have you been in the Mount Klitsa concourse lately?
If you have, then you've seen the brand new, big round, green recycling bins.
We've got three of these huge things.
One is for drinking boxes, one is for aluminum cans and another is for plastic bottles.
Whenever I pass through the concourse recently, they always seem like they're being used.
2006
The Raven Recycling Society is no longer accepting drinking boxes for dairy products and is asking the people of Whitehorse to throw them in the garbage.
Raven officials said last Wednesday they will no longer be accepting dairy or dairy substitute drink boxes for recycling as they present too great a challenge for recycling staff.
2010
Under Alex's seat, aside from the sticks, there was a toy he received in a goodie bag following a friend's birthday party. I also found a few french fries, several M&Ms, a bunch of goldfish crackers and the straw from a drinking box. Kids and their snacks - don't leave home without them.
2015
While only glass bottles and jars, tin and aluminum cans and newspapers were collected at the outset, a wide variety of products has been added since, including mixed paper, cardboard, rigid plastic containers, pizza boxes and polycoated containers (soup and milk cartons, drinking boxes and gable-top containers).
References
- Tagliamonte & D'Arcy (2007)
- Dollinger (2015a) • Article
- Dollinger (2015b)
- COD-2
Images
Chart 1: Internet Domain Search, 26 Nov. 2015
