A casket, a jewel-box. Quintilian produces this term as an example of catachresis, because it properly denoted that which was made of box, but was applied to things of similar form and use made of any other material. In fact, the caskets in which the ladies of ancient times kept their jewels and other ornaments, were made of gold, silver, ivory, mother of pearl, tortoise shell, etc. They were also much enriched with sculpture. A silver coffer, two feet long, one and a half wide, and one deep, most elaborately adorned with figures in bar-relief, is described by Bottiger. The annexed woodcut, from the antique, represents a plain jewel-box, out of which a dove is extracting a riband or fillet. - Smith, 1873