tinderbox
Sign in to saveAlso known as tinder box
thumb|right|Sheet iron tinderboxes. English, 18th and early 19th C. thumb|Pocket tinderbox with firesteel and flint. This type was used during the Second Boer War|Boer War due to a scarcity of matches
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Encyclopedic overview
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- History
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- As metaphor
- See also
- References
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thumb|right|Sheet iron tinderboxes. English, 18th and early 19th C. thumb|Pocket tinderbox with firesteel and flint. This type was used during the Second Boer War|Boer War due to a scarcity of matches
A tinderbox, or patch box, is a container made of wood or metal containing flint, firesteel, and tinder (typically charcloth, but possibly a small quantity of dry, finely divided fibrous matter such as hemp), used together to help kindle a fire. A tinderbox may also contain sulfur-tipped matches.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tinderbox” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.