Definition of "jukebox"

jukebox

/ˈd͡ʒuːkbɒks/

noun
plural jukeboxes
1. A coin-operated machine that plays recorded music; it has push-buttons to make selections.
  Quotations
  Glenn Miller plays more sweet numbers than hot. His greatest success has been with the “juke boxes”, the nickel-in-a-slot automatic phonographs. Miller is easily the most outstanding juke-box artist of 1939.
  1939 December 18, Life, p. 27
2. (computing) An automated carousel for the storage and retrieval of tapes, CD-ROMs, etc.
3. (computing, by extension) A software application capable of replaying tracks from a digital music collection.
  Quotations
  Before you export a movie to tape, double-check the following: Make sure all unnecessary programs are closed, including your e-mail program, MP3 jukebox, and Web browser.
  2011, Keith Underdahl, Adobe Premiere Pro For Dummies
4. (theater) Ellipsis of jukebox musical.
  Quotations
  Jukeboxes have frequently been compared to the megamusicals and are considered a direct offshoot.
  2022, Kevin Byrne, Emily Fuchs, The Jukebox Musical: An Interpretive History‎, Taylor & Francis
verb
third-person singular simple present jukeboxes, present participle jukeboxing, simple past and past participle jukeboxed
1. To play and listen to music from a jukebox.
  Quotations
  Haven't you ever wasted money jukeboxing in the bars that are bathed in pastis and grenadine?
  1966, Xavier Domingo, The dreams of reason: a novel, page 75
  She'd been forty-four, him forty-two when they met, both of them drinking a little too much, both of them fed up with romance. She'd said she'd been jukeboxed half to death.
  2004, Mary Sojourner, Delicate: Stories, page 238
  Behind the counter, repairing a clogged sink and making chocolate egg creams at the same time, to jukebox riffs of Patti LaBelle singing "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman," was the proprietor, Rudy.
  2008, Cullen Dorn, The Hierophant of 100th Street: Known to the Spirits as Infinitude
  In the Mayfield Days everybody smoked so they all smelled good, teeth as white and wild as urinal cakes, chattered and jukeboxed into the slurring sunset when the real drunks came in Fresh off some shift furnace soot still in their hair
  2010, Craig Sipe, Hero Sandwich, page 37
2. (transitive) To play (music or digital content) on a jukebox
  Quotations
  They are everywhere today, whistled in the streets, broadcasted, jukeboxed, danced to in ballrooms.
  1950, Arnold Gingrich, Coronet - Volume 29, page 52
  BMI members are turning out some perfectly terrible songs which nevertheless are recorded and jukeboxed and played on the air.
  1957, United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary, Monopoly Problems in Regulated Industries
  I'm no longer thinking about TV as real time content streaming, but rather as file jukeboxing.
  2002, The Cook Report on Internet, NREN. - Volume 11, page 61
3. (by extension) To play or repeat as if on a jukebox.
  Quotations
  Foamy-chopped dogs frisk the pavements for barf-free kebab or hot dropped fry, mobiles trilling de-daw-de-dee theme tunes, their birdsong jukeboxing the cigarette air as rain falls from a plum sky ...
  2007, Alan A. Gillis, Hawks and doves, page 18
  Another one of her sister's old records jukeboxed on in her head.
  2012, Steven Wishnia, When the Drumming Stops
4. To format or set up for playing by a jukebox.
  Quotations
  And best of all, per-document-stored cost will be substantially under what it is on spinning spindles alone or when the disks are jukeboxed.
  1984, The Journal of Information and Image Management
  Whether discs holding only a hundred images, even if "jukeboxed" in a CD-ROM drive, will be of practical use for large image collections remains to be seen, but at the very least the Photo CD will offer a relatively inexpensive method of obtaining a modest collection of digitized color images.
  1992, Visual Resources Association Bulletin - Volumes 19-20, page 38
  Jukeboxing can put nearly 20-36 GB of information at users disposal.
  1994, Library Science with a Slant to Documentation and Information Studies