English

An English concertina, which is a type of squeezebox

Noun

squeezebox ‎(plural squeezeboxes)

1. (music, informal) Synonym of accordion or concertina.
   • 1975 November, Pete Townshend (lyrics and music), “Squeeze Box”, in The Who by Numbers, performed by The Who:

     Mama's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest. / From when Daddy comes home, he never gets no rest. / Because she's playing all night, and the music's all right.

   • 1980, Louis Nowra, “Inside the Island”, in Helen Gilbert, editor, Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2001, ISBN 978-1-415-16448-1, page 291:

     (Pause. peter picks up his squeeze box.) / peter I sing with this. / george A concertina. / peter No, it's a squeeze box. Can you play it? / george I love music, but can't play a thing.

   • 1999, James P. Leary, “Polka Music in a Polka State”, in James P. Leary, editor, Wisconsin Folklore, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 978-0-299-16030-2, page 279:

     Like the "concertina oompah" phase of the Dutchman style, the Slovenian polka sound emphasizes skill with a squeezebox.

   • 2002, Howard Jacobson, chapter 2, in Who's Sorry Now?, London: Jonathan Cape, ISBN 978-0-224-06286-2; republished London: Vintage Books, 2003, ISBN 978-0-09-943737-6, page 29:

     Intoxicating, the cheap Moroccan wallets, squashed and flattened in their elasticated dozens, which he eased apart like squeeze-boxes, releasing their scent of oxhide, of urine, of all the dyes and spices of the kasbah.

   • 2003, Cliff Eisen, quoting Antonio Salieri, “Mozart’s Chamber Music”, in Simon P. Keefe, editor, The Cambridge Companion to Mozart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-80734-0, page 105:

     It [Serenade for Winds in B Flat Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart] started simply enough: just a pulse in the lowest registers – bassoons and basset horns – like a rusty squeezebox. It would have been comic except for the slowness, which gave it instead a sort of serenity. […] But the squeezebox went on and on, and the pain cut deeper into my shaking head, until suddenly I was running, dashing through the side door, stumbling downstairs into the street, into the cold night, gasping for life.

   • 2006, Richard March, “Polka”, in Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew [R. L.] Cayton, editors, The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0-253-34886-9, page 388, column 1:

     Squeezeboxes are essential instruments in most polka traditions, especially the button accordion, the piano accordion, and the Chemnitzer concertina. […] Manufacture and sale of squeezeboxes made the instruments widely accessible at a time when polkas were all the rage. The squeezebox-polka association remains. A majority of polka bands use an accordion or concertina.

   • 2010, Dan M[ichael] Worrall, “The Concertina at Sea”, in The Anglo-German Concertina: A Social History, volume 1, 3rd edition, Fulshear, Tx.: Concertina Press, ISBN 978-0-9825996-0-0, page 324, column 2:

     Memories held by an older generation faded—memories of concertinas used in twilight dances on deck under a tropical sky or of Royal Navy soldiers dancing a hornpipe to its sound—and succeeding generations saw only Captain Pugwash’s “Tom the Cabin Boy,” fictional Disney pirates, and Tinseltown crooners with fake squeezeboxes.

2. Alternative form of squeeze box ‎(“device for immobilizing an animal; box used by cavers for practising”).

Alternative forms

• squeeze box

Derived terms

• (musical instrument): squeezeboxer

Translations