Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US drugs) to fill a small sealed room with the smoke of cannabis or crack cocaine; also n. the room thus impreganted with smoke.

1994		Jay alt.drugs Feb. 18 🌐 ‘Re: smoking in dorm room’: ‘I feel sorry for you, just try to find a safe place outside that you can go and smoke’… ‘try hot boxing a car :) it works… although you have to be careful, and out on some old gravel road.’.
2005		C. Sorrentino Trance 340: Hotboxing it in his car at lunchtime, a thin David Dubinsky rolled of Humboldt County’s finest.
2020		G. Krauze What They Was 33: Billing our own zoots and bunning them until the whole top deck [of the bus] was a hotbox smelling loud.
2022		I. Fitzgerald Dirtbag, Massachusetts 51: [H]otboxing the junked cars in Connor’s front yard.

2. to take a deep draw on a cigarette, thus n.

1992		G. Pelecanos Firing Offense 61: Fisher was [...] drinking coffee and hot-boxing a Marlboro.
1994		G. Pelecanos Shoedog 150: Constantine had a drag off his cigarette, followed that with a long hotbox.
1998		(con. 1986) G. Pelecanos Sweet Forever 277: He hotboxed his cigarette and stabbed it savagely into the ashtray.
2000		Eminem ‘Bitch please II’ 🎵 Your little lungs is too small to hotbox with God.
2008		D. Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2009) 255: After hotboxing three quarters of her Salem, she tossed the butt in the direction of the ashtray.