sandbox

Etymology

sand + box.

noun

1. (US) A children's play area consisting of a box filled with sand.
2. A box filled with sand that is shaped to form a mould for metal casting.
3. A container for sand or pounce, used historically before blotting paper.
4. An animal's litter box.
5. (rail transport) A box carried on locomotives, from which sand runs onto the rails in front of the driving wheels, to prevent slipping.
   For the most part they were small standard gauge 0-6-0 side tanks of the type illustrated, with long tapered chimneys and an unusual feature for the Continent in the shape of domeless boilers, the protuberance just behind the chimney being a sandbox. 1941 August, “Notes and News: The Swiss South Eastern Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 376
6. (computing) An isolated area where a program can be executed with a restricted portion of the resources available.
   Running a program in a sandbox can prevent it from doing any damage to the system.
7. (Wikimedia jargon) A page on a wiki where users are free to experiment without destroying or damaging any legitimate content.
8. (US, military, slang, usually "The Sandbox") The Middle East.

verb

1. (computing, transitive) To restrict (a program, etc.) by placing it in a sandbox.
   Although you can use standard JavaScript and AJAX in sandboxed iframe pages to your heart's content, the Facebook Platform places restrictions over the amount of scripting capabilities you can add to the more tightly integrated FBML pages. 2011, Richard Wagner, Building Facebook Applications For Dummies