treasure chest

treasure chest (plural treasure chests)

1. A chest filled with treasure, especially one used by pirates, etc.
2. (metonymically) A treasury, especially a state or royal treasury.
   • 1892, Joseph Jacobs, “Notes on the Jews of England under the Angevin Kings”, in The Jewish Quarterly Review, volume 4, page 634:

     They acted the part of a sponge for the Royal Treasury, they gathered up all the floating money of the country, to be squeezed from time to time into the king’s treasure-chest […]

   • 1977, Richard Hyatt, The Carters of Plains, page 103:

     The visitors pour upward of $60,000 into the state’s treasure chest.

   • 2006, D. M. Metcalf, “Inflows of Anglo-Saxon and German coins into the Northern lands c. 997–1024: discerning the patterns”, in Barrie Cook, Gareth Williams, editors, Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c. AD 500–1250, →ISBN, page 364:

     When Anglo-Saxon coins left England for Scandinavia they could, hypothetically, have been withdrawn from a royal treasure-chest replenished from tolls and taxes collected nationwide.

3. (figurative) Any source of something valuable or beautiful.

   Synonym: gold mine

   a treasure chest of poems