Hello all,
I’m editing a book by an Irish writer but it will be aimed at the American market so I need to make sure it’s written in the vernacular (cupboards for presses, etc.). Can anyone tell me if the term ‘box room’ is used to describe a small spare room in a house?
Many thanks,
Tayto
I’ve never heard it.
I’ve never heard the term, and now that I know its meaning I’d say I’ve seen precious few of them. I’m in my late 50’s, grew up in the Washington D.C. area, have lived in the Midwest for about 40 years.
A box room would probably be described as a large closet with a window. American houses don’t really have them.
I’d never heard the term, but my new house has one, and now I know what to call it (beyond “walk-in closet with a window”). Thanks!
No, never heard of it. I don’t think there is a general all-encompassing term, other than perhaps “spare room”. If it was used for guests, it might be the “guest room” or if it was used for storage it might be a “storage room”. My wife and I have a small room that we put call our crap in that we call our “junk room”.
Here we’d call that a walk in closet or a storage closet.
Thanks all. Think I’ll just stick with spare room and try to convey its boxiness in another way.
While I have you, is the expression ‘headed’ as in ‘went’ used in the US? I’m pretty sure it’s an Irish term but having grown up with it it’s hard to tell. For example ‘He headed towards the city centre’. It’s generally used when the person is walking. Also used in the context of ‘I’m heading out/off’ when taking your leave from a place.
I’m sure I could have put that a bit better but have been working since the wee hours and brain is pure fluff…
Nope, we use ‘spare room’ for the spare room in a house, or if it also includes the back door into the kitchen, it gets called a ‘mud room’
Although you really won’t find a small spare room used just for storage for the most part in newish houses, it gets combined into a small back room off the kitchen that has the back door and is a mud room, occasionally it has the water heater and furnace, and perhaps the laundry and is called variously the laundry room, the mud room, the utility room or even the junk room. Frequently we have an attached garage that holds the utilities and laundry, and junk is sort of tossed up on the rafters and in corners and no real junk/mud/utility room at all. Some people put a small shed in the back yard to hold junk as well.
I think “headed” is fine in the third person. Speaking in the first person I’d say it’s slightly uncommon in the abstract “I’m heading off” context you cite, but not seen as wrong or weird. “I’m leaving” or “I’m going” would be more common. “I’m heading” in a specific context on the other hand, such as “I’m heading to the grocery store”, would be perfectly normal.
Thanks for the helpful replies all. I may be back for more…
Tayto
Headed is absolutely fine. My friends and I use it all the time, as in: “I’m heading home.” usually at the end of a bout of drinking.
Headed was used almost exclusively where I grew up in the Smokey Mtns in Tennessee.
I’ve never heard “box room” before, even when I was outside the US. If you used it in a piece, people would think it meant a room where you kept boxes.
“headed” is very commonly used here, as people have said.
There’s a vast number of such idiosyncrasies in usage, so I suspect you won’t catch them all. One that stands out in my mind is the UK habit of saying “double(number)” if a digit is repeated in a telephone number or house number. I’ve never heard an American say, for instance “five-five-five-double six four zero” in giving a phone number. When Hannibal Lektor does so in the movie Manhunter, it immediately alerted me. As if Cox’ accent alone wouldn’t have.
The one exception to this may be “double oh” for “00.” I frequently give the last four digits of my mobile phone number as “double oh five four,” and rarely does it result in any confusion.
Most people in the U.S. have a junk room. A spare room where boxes and other clutter get stored. I think that’s the same as a “box room”.
It’s not confusion – it’s about simply using the phrase. Most Americans I know never use it, and I seriously doubt they’d ever say it. it’s not used or heard enough to be part of the general vocabulary.
But everyone understands it when it’s used.
The only “double 0” I ever heard Americans use is in James Bond’s Secret Service designation.
A real estate agent would refer to a box room as a “bonus room.”
I think it may be more common in areas where many of the zip codes have a double zero.
Wisconsin here.
No. I’ve never heard the term box room.
Yes we head to town or head home.
Sometimes a spare room is called a spare room, sometimes a storage or junk room.
Mud rooms, though, in my experience, have a sink and toilet. If you come in from working in the yard, you make a stop in the mud room to get the worst of the dirt off of yourself…that’s why they’re called mud rooms. It’s not a mud room without the plumbing.
I’ve known what box room means for years, but I read a lot of fiction that’s written in or about the UK, and I sort of picked up the meaning of the idea from the context. The box room is where one stores the stuff that’s still good, and perfectly usable, but which isn’t currently being used. Things like curtains which don’t match the current decor.