Box office

Office selling event tickets

For total movie ticket sales, see List of highest-grossing films. For the publication, see BoxOffice (magazine). For the Aja album, see Box Office (album).

"Booking office" redirects here. For airline booking offices, see city ticket office.

Box office at the Ohio Theatre in Columbus, Ohio Folk festival box office in Edmonton, Alberta Ticket window at North Port High School Performing Arts Center

A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the film industry, as a metonym for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives. The term is also used to refer to a ticket office at an arena or a stadium.[1]

## Etymology

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Ceramic money boxes were used at the sixteenth-century Globe Theatre and Rose Theatre in London, where many examples have been found during archaeological investigations. They were possibly used by the "gatherer" at the entrance to the theatres, who collected the admission money. There is disagreement, however, around whether the term originates from this time, as the objects could have been carried by the many snack-sellers attending the audiences; they too needed a convenient and secure way to collect their customers' cash. There is no record of the term being used until the eighteenth century.[2]

The term "box office" was being used from at least 1741, deriving from the office from which tickets for theatre boxes were sold (although the use of "box" for a private section from which to watch the play was in use in 1609); this is the derivation favoured by the Oxford English Dictionary.[3]

## Related terminology

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Total ticket sales were being termed box office from at least 1904.[4]

# References=

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1. ^ "box office". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 2018-10-05.
2. ^ Multiple sources:
* Coker, Ollie. "What do we know about Tudor & Stuart money pots?". Museum of London. Retrieved 26 May 2024. "[…]remnants of the landscape of theatres […] One with coins still inside."
* Hendrickson, Robert (1997). The Facts on File encyclopedia of word and phrase origins. New York: Facts on File. p. 96\. ISBN 0-8160-3266-1.
* Appleton, Stephanie (3 May 2013). "Shakespeare in 100 Objects: Money Pot". Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Retrieved 26 May 2024.
3. ^ "box office". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
4. ^ box office Archived 2020-05-09 at the Wayback Machine in the Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper, 2001

## External links

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Look up box office in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

* Media related to Box offices at Wikimedia Commons