tardis

plural tardises

1. alternativeAlternative form of Tardis.

   This small paperback book is a veritable tardis of tips on how to preserve the harvest glut. It covers 51 types of fruit and vegetables, including herbs.

   1999, The Organic Way, numbers 157-174, page 53

   2 more examples

   The photograph 'the romance of the auto/biographer's desk' is a tardis; when I enter the photograph I can move through time, move through a variety of times indeed.

   1995, Liz Stanley, The Auto/Biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto-Biography, page 54

   10 Downing Street is a tardis of a property. Behind its famous black door lies a maze of corridors, offices and reception rooms. In one such room, decorated with oak panelling and oil paintings […]

   2009, Dominic Varadi, The Credit Crunch Conspiracy, page 214

plural TARDISes

1. The time machine and spacecraft used by the Doctor in the British sci-fi television series Doctor Who, which is larger on the inside than its exterior (that of a British police box) suggests, or any of the conceptually similar time machines used by other members of the Doctor's race, the Time Lords.

   'While I was in the Rani's TARDIS, I made an adjustment or two.' He chuckled, remembering the occasion.

   1986, Pip & Jane Baker, chapter 19, in The Mark of the Rani, page 129

   2 more examples

   The Master's essence escapes his funeral urn and lands the TARDIS in San Francisco on December 30, 1999.

   2000, Fraser A. Sherman, Cyborgs, Santa Claus, and Satan, page 57

   I want the ground to swallow me up. I want to hide in a corner, curl up, and weep, sucking my thumb. I want the TARDIS to appear and take me away.

   2004, Will Hadcroft, The Feeling's Unmutual: Growing up with Asperger Syndrome (Undiagnosed), page 16

plural TARDISes

1. alternativeAlternative form of Tardis (something which resembles the bigger-on-the-inside time machine from the series Doctor Who).

   This unassuming Georgian terrace house, located within five minutes walk of the busy commercial and tourist heart of Bath in Somerset, is like a veritable TARDIS of astronomical history and discovery, with more to see on the inside than its [exterior suggests].

   2008, in Astronomy Now, volume 22, issues 7–12, page 36

plural Tardises · alternative TARDIS · alternative tardis

1. alternativeAlternative form of TARDIS (time machine from the series Doctor Who which is larger on the inside than the outside).

   HENRY: Rae, how will you get home? RAE: I thought I'd use the Tardis.

   2009, Lisa Lutz, Curse of the Spellmans, page 299

   3 more examples

   […] in a cubicle on the top floor which, because of its 21st century appearance, is known to everybody as the 'Tardis'.

   1977 September 15, The Engineer, 245, 61

   "Yeah, just blew in on the Tardis," Bowie said, unwinding a length of scarf from his throat.

   1998, Rafi Zabor, The Bear Comes Home, page 180

   The Tardis required neither expensive special effects nor a complex plot to imagine a British space programme. The Tardis looked like a police box, the audience eventually learned, because it had a 'chameleon circuit' allowing its shape to change to blend in with each new environment, and this circuit had broken when the Doctor first arrived in London.

   2001, Nicholas Cull, “‘Bigger on the inside...’: Doctor Who as British cultural history”, in Graham Roberts, Philip M. Taylor, editors, The Historian, Television and Television History, page 99

plural Tardises · alternative TARDIS · alternative tardis

1. Something which resembles such a machine, either in that it travels through time or in that its interior is or appears to be larger (or more full of information or things) than its exterior suggested.

   British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) […] BAAF's website is a veritable Tardis of information and I would recommend you go there first.

   2009, Ian Palmer, What to Expect When You're Adopting: a practical guide, →ISBN, page 248

   3 more examples

   What the designers of the Campanian programmes aim for is something like a 'Tardis effect', the dissolving of actual boundaries into a limitless space[…]

   1990, Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting

   There was that little person, in the image of the future she had conjured up; there was something that it was like to be that little person; and it would be the same as what it was like to be this little person. A self is a Tardis, a time-machine: […]

   2008, Charles Fernyhough, The Baby in the Mirror: A Child's World from Birth to Three, page 129

   As impossible as it seemed, all the prizes had come from the cracker, but Sally had no idea how. When the old woman had said the cracker was unusual, Sally hadn't thought she meant that it was bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside! A veritable Tardis in fact.

   2012, Jessica L. Jackson, When I First Met You, →ISBN, page 8