thunderbox

1. (slang) A chamber pot enclosed in a box; a portable commode.Examples: "True, our cash would run out, but Charleton wouldn't let us starve. He'd put us into shorts, and we should wash the dishes and clean the thunder-boxes and take out guests for walks."; "Then, after another pause, he said: "Well, if you must know, it's my Thunder-box." […] He opened it, showing a mechanism of heavy cast-iron brass and patterned earthenware of solid Edwardian workmanship. On the inside of the lid was a plaque bearing the embossed title Connolly's Chemical Closet."; "[T]he response would sound from some soldier unseen, perhaps astride a thunderbox in the ablutions."Synonyms: close-stool, bedpan, can, chamber, chamber pot, chemical toilet, commode, Cousin Johnslang

2. (by extension, chiefly Australia, British, slang) Any lavatory or toilet, especially a rudimentary outdoor latrine or toilet, or an outhouse.Examples: "Meantime the ICE [Institute of Consumer Ergonomics] experts are poring over their photographs, and making measurements, which, presumably, will go into a computer, and out will come the specification for the perfect thunderbox."; "In the old days, when there was a corrugated iron thunderbox, the Holts' guests were told to approach it with caution: where other thunderboxes had redback spiders, the local ones tended to have taipans."; "It's an invaluable open-sided box with no bottom and a hole in the top. Perch this over a hole in the ground and voila! you have a thunder box. Comfy to sit on and handsome as well."Synonyms: bathroom, latrine, necessarium, toilet, toilet room, urinal, water closet, WCAustraliaBritishbroadlyslang

3. (theater) A box of metal balls which is shaken to create a thunder sound effect.Examples: "[T]wo articles, both indispensibly necessary to a theatre, are not blundered, viz. a property room, and thunder box!—no they are omitted altogether!!"; "[H]e [the English actor West Digges] said, "Take the child to the slips;" and I was led through the carpenter's gallery, the cloudings and thunder boxes, and placed in a good seat, where I saw the play with great delight."; "It was what is called a good passage, and a feather in the Casco’s cap; but among the most miserable forty hours that any one of us had ever passed. We were swung and tossed together all that time like shot in a stage thunder-box."Synonyms: thunder run