A container in a printing press where damaged or broken type pieces are collected for recycling or disposal.
From 'hell' (a typographical term for a receptacle) and 'box.' The term originated in the printing trade in the 16th-17th centuries, where discarded metal type needed storage before melting down for reuse.
Printers called their waste bin a 'hell' because the jumbled, damaged letters were chaotic and unusable—kind of like linguistic purgatory—showing how printing workers had darkly humorous names for their workspace!
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