Definition of "black box" []

• A device or theoretical construct with known or specified performance characteristics but unknown or unspecified constituents and means of operation. (noun)
• Something that is mysterious, especially as to function. (noun)
• See flight recorder. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Would an engine failure at precisely T+1:13 in conjunction with an unexpected wind sheer at 65,000-feet altitude cause a software switch in some black box to flip to a different polarity and sendColumbia out of control?"
• "I believed in a kind of prewritten story: I would meet a boy, probably at the age of the teenagers at Glenside Pool, who sat on one big blanket in a tangle of bikinis, gold chains, black box radios with spiky antennae."
• "It resembled a large, high-roofed black box with a net stretched across the middle."