Origin and history of boxy

"rectangular wooden container," usually with a lid, Old English box, also the name of a type of shrub, from Late Latin buxis, from Greek pyxis "boxwood," pyxion "writing table, box," made of boxwood, from pyxos "box tree," which is of uncertain origin. Beekes suggests a loan-word from Italy, as that is where the tree is native. Dutch bus, German Büchse "box; barrel of a gun," also are Latin loan-words.

The meaning "compartment at a theater" is from c. 1600 (box seat in the theatrical sense is by 1850). The meaning "pigeon-hole at a post office" is from 1832. The meaning "television" is from 1950 (earlier "gramophone player," 1924). The meaning "station of a player in baseball" is from 1881. The graphics sense of "space enclosed within borders and rules" is from 1929. The slang meaning "vulva" is attested 17c., according to "Dictionary of American Slang;" modern use seems to date from c. World War II, perhaps originally Australian, on the notion of box of tricks. Box lunch (n.) is attested from 1899. The box set "multiple-album, CD or cassette issue of the work of an artist" is attested by 1955. To think or act outside the box "contrary to convention" is attested by 1994.

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

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Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.