> as lemmas

?1548 J. Bale Image Bothe Churches (new ed.) iii. sig. Bb.viii The vessels of yuory comprehendeth al theyr maundy dishes, their offering platters their relique chystes, their god boxes, their drinking horns.

1874 S. J. MacKenna At School with Old Dragoon 235 He..bids the men squat down, and opens his god-box as the former shudderingly regard it.

1890 Freethinker 14 Sept. 440/1 R. B. Cunningham Grahame, M.P...speaks of chapel as ‘some dissenting god-box’.

1892 W. W. Gill S. Pacific & New Guinea 20 The priest, or ‘god-box’,..went through the needful prayers.

1923 C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards Meaning of Meaning ii. 37 The priests in whom gods were supposed to dwell (a belief which induced the Cantonese to apply the term ‘god-boxes’ to such favoured personages)—are amongst the victims of this logophobia.

1928 J. Galsworthy Swan Song iii. xii. 305 This great box—God-box the Americans would call it—had been made centuries before the world became industrialised.

1937 Amer. Speech 12 181/12 Godbox, organ.

1962 New Statesman 25 May 768/2 A ring-a-ding God-box that will go over big with the flat-bottomed latitudinarians.

1995 Faith Today Mar. 28/2 Through the Toronto Blessing our ‘God boxes’ have been stretched—smashed, if the truth be told.

1998 R. Stone Damascus Gate ii. xxix. 227 ‘So the tourist goes up into the choir loft to see who's at the keyboard, and who do you think he sees?’ ‘Fats Waller?’ ‘Hell,’ Lucas said. ‘You knew... So Fats says, “Just trying their God box, man”.’