mailbox vs postbox vs letter box
Anatoly Kurilin
I would like to make more precise the usage of the following words: mailbox,
postbox and letter box.
Is it true, that mailboxes and postboxes are used in the streets for puting
letters in them. If so, please tell me which of these words is more
preferable these days.
The problem is with the third word - letter box. It used to be fixed on the
door of a department for extracting incoming mail from it. But now in Moscow
in the most apartment building these things are sitting on the ground floor
near the entrance. So, should I still call them letter boxes?
Thanks in advance,
Anatoly K. Kurilin
Polar
Speaking from the U.S., mailboxes are used in the streets for
mailing (note U.S. usage) letters.
I'm pretty sure we also call that bank of boxes at the entrance
to an apartment building "mail boxes". If I'm wrong, someone
else from U.S. will correct me.
The only time we use "post" is in "post office".
--
Polar
Anatoly Kurilin
but do you still call the mail box on the door of an appartment "letter box"
or this word combination is not used anymore?
"Polar" <sme...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:7kn48t8ajmksmqo70...@4ax.com...
John Cartmell
<akur...@mtu-net.ru> wrote:
> Thanks for the promt reply, but do you still call the mail box on the
> door of an appartment "letter box" or this word combination is not used
> anymore?
UK
Postbox - in street for letters to be delivered
Letter box - in front door for receipt of letters
Mail box - program construct in computer
In institutions where post is centralised on receipt and placed in racks
these may be called pigeon holes, letter racks or possibly post racks but
this naming varies considerably from one institution to another.
--
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~ designer craft products ~ information products ~ information services ~
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- - - and in Acorn User magazine - November 2000
Daniel James
> I would like to make more precise the usage of the following words:
mailbox,
> postbox and letter box.
There is a difference between British and American practice. Not just a
difference in usage of the words, but also in the collection and delivery of
letters.
In Britain the word "post" tends to be used more than the word "mail"
(though our postal service is called the "Royal Mail"), in America it is the
other way around.
In Britain one sends a letter by posting it into a post box or a pillar box.
The term pillar box really refers to a particular widely-used and highly
distinctive type of post box but has become a general term and is also used
of other kinds of postal collection boxes. When the letter is delivered to
your home it is put through a "letter box", which is a slot cut into the
front door of the house, and usually covered with a hinged flap to keep out
the rain.
Every house has its own letter box in the front door, but postal deliveries
for flats are usually left at a single place by the main entrance. There may
just be a table on which all post is left to be sorted by the tenants
themselves, there may be a grid of open boxes or "pigeon holes" on the wall
- one box per flat - into which arriving post is sorted by the postman, or
there may be lockable boxes (called "post boxes" or "mail boxes") - to which
the tenants have the keys - each of which has a slot through which the
postman can insert the post.
In America, letters are posted in the same way as in the UK, though the
distinctive "pillar boxes" are not used and so neither is that term. I
always think that American post boxes look disturbingly similar to refuse
bins, and I don't know what term is most commonly used to refer to them.
When letters are delivered to a house in America they are not usually taken
all the way to the front door, but are left at the boundary of the property.
Many properties provide some sort of container - often a box standing on a
post - at the boundary of the property to protect delivered items from the
rain. I believe these are normally called "mailboxes". I believe the
delivery arrangements at apartment blocks are similar to those at British
blocks of flats.
As you can see, there are a number of social and cultural differences
between the British and American systems, and each has its own different
usage of the various terms that might be employed. Postal delivery systems
in other English-speaking countries are different again, and will add
further to the variety of ways in which the terms are used. There's no easy
answer.
Cheers,
Daniel.
Anatoly Kurilin
recommend to call these boxes for somebody living in Moscow in a block of
flats?
"Daniel James" <inte...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:VA.0000048...@nospam.demon.co.uk...
Polar
<akur...@mtu-net.ru> wrote:
>Thanks for the promt reply,
>but do you still call the mail box on the door of an appartment "letter box"
>or this word combination is not used anymore?
It never was used in the U.S. to my knowledge.
The mail box on the door of my house (not apartment)
is a slot in the door. So one hears the expression "Oh,
just throw it through the mail slot".
Some people have a mail box at the foot of their driveway,
or at their door. Again, to my knowledge, it's always
been called just that: mail box.
--
Polar
Ray Heindl
<VA.0000048...@nospam.demon.co.uk>:
>In America, letters are posted in the same way as in the UK, though
>the distinctive "pillar boxes" are not used and so neither is that
>term. I always think that American post boxes look disturbingly
>similar to refuse bins, and I don't know what term is most commonly
>used to refer to them.
They're called mailboxes. Some old-fashioned trash bins are made in
the identical shape, the only distinguishing features being the color,
the lack of the US Postal Service logo, and sometimes a label saying
"Not for deposit of mail."
>When letters are delivered to a house in America they are not
>usually taken all the way to the front door, but are left at the
>boundary of the property. Many properties provide some sort of
>container - often a box standing on a post - at the boundary of the
>property to protect delivered items from the rain. I believe these
>are normally called "mailboxes". I believe the delivery arrangements
>at apartment blocks are similar to those at British blocks of flats.
How close to the door mail is delivered depends on the neighborhood.
In areas with large building lots the mailbox is usually on a post next
to the curb, and the letter carrier (called a mailman in the pre-PC
era) drives from box to box and deposits the mail. Where lots are
small, such as my neighborhood, the letter carrier walks from door to
door and deposits letters into a mailbox attached to the front of the
house, or through a mail slot in or near the front door.
--
Ray Heindl
JB
>
> They're called mailboxes. Some old-fashioned trash bins are made in
> the identical shape, the only distinguishing features being the color,
> the lack of the US Postal Service logo, and sometimes a label saying
> "Not for deposit of mail."
Those boxes labelled "Not for deposit of mail" are (or were) Post
Office marshalling boxes, used by walking letter carriers to deposit
collected mail and to retrieve pre-sorted batches of mail for
delivery. This lightened the carrier's load and extended his/her
range. These boxes were not equipped with drop slots, only
key-operated doors, and could therefore not be used to deposit either
mail or trash. They were purposely painted differently from mail
deposit boxes so as not to confuse the public. They were often
targets of thieves intent on stealing masses of Social Security
checks, which were all generally delivered on the same day. These
marshalling boxes may not be in wide use today as most letter carriers
are motorized.
--JB
Daniel James
> ... what would you recommend to call these boxes for somebody
> living in Moscow in a block of flats?
I assume you mean: what would one call them in English. I'm sure you have a
term for them in Russian which could be translated literally into English.
You might still find that the most obvious literal translation was different if
you were writing for an American Engliash speaker rather than a British English
speaker.
I'm sorry I can;t help more.
Cheers,
Daniel.
picaresque
From the US. Mailbox can be the boxes at the end of the drive on a
post, or the metal containers (that do look like garbage cans) for the
general public to deposit mail for delivery. There are also banks of
mailboxes in rural areas where instead of the box at the end of the
driveway, everyone who lives on the road will have a box in the bank.
That saves the mailman from having to drive down a long road to deliver
individually. He can just stop in one location and deposit the mail in
each persons individual locked cubby or box.
There are Post Office Boxes for those who don't have mail delivery
available to their homes or businesses at all or those who don't trust
the delivery to the boxes at the end of the driveway due to theft
or "mailbox baseball" incidents. In that case we rent a box of
differing sizes and need to go to the post office itself and pick up
our own mail.
A letter box to me is a slot in a door where the mail can be dropped
through directly into the house or office when the mailman (or lady) is
delivering the mail. Or it can be a persons designated box in a grid
where mail is sorted at the office after it has been delivered by the
postal service.
Mailbox baseball: drunken idiots drive up and down the streets at
night on the wrong side of the road so that the persons on the
passenger side can strike the mailbox with a baseball bat and knock it
off of the post.
picaresque
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
Ray Heindl
<3A83302D...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART>:
You'd think they'd be clearly marked as Postal Service property, to
discourage vandalism if nothing else. Of course, that might encourage
it instead. I wonder if I've been misidentifying them as trash cans
all these years, or if there really are trash cans of the same shape as
well. Now that I think about it, I don't recall ever actually putting
trash in one.
--
Ray Heindl
Ray Heindl
<961e70$dle$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>:
>Mailbox baseball: drunken idiots drive up and down the streets at
>night on the wrong side of the road so that the persons on the
>passenger side can strike the mailbox with a baseball bat and knock it
>off of the post.
Why on the _wrong_ side of the road? The passenger side is normally
closer to the side of the road isn't it? (Unless the driver is too
drunk to stay on one side of the road.)
--
Ray Heindl
JB
>
> bbr...@mail.shasta.com (picaresque) wrote
>
> >Mailbox baseball: drunken idiots drive up and down the streets at
> >night on the wrong side of the road so that the persons on the
> >passenger side can strike the mailbox with a baseball bat and knock it
> >off of the post.
>
> Why on the _wrong_ side of the road? The passenger side is normally
> closer to the side of the road isn't it? (Unless the driver is too
> drunk to stay on one side of the road.)
It's because this game is played using British cars on American roads.
:-)
The mailbox owner take part in this game too, by always leaving a
couple of bricks in his mailbox overnight.
A neighborhood I lived in suffered from a related game: bash the trash
can. After garbage pickup, the empty cans are left strewn about front
yards until homeowners get home and put them away. Vandals in Jeeps
drive along the front yards (no fences) and ram the empty cans with
their reinforced front bumpers, sending them flying. One homeowner
put an end to this by setting out a decoy trash can filled with
concrete. The Jeep was demolished and the riders went to hospital,
then jail.
--JB
JB
>
> job...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART (JB) wrote
The ones I recall (it's been years) were squat, stout boxes with round
tops, painted brown. They are similar in shape to the blue letter
drop boxes except they do not have drop slots. They probably had a
Postal emblem embossed in the sheet metal for ownership identification
but it was not painted or highlighted to make it stand out. The "not
for deposit of mail" sign was to discourage citizens from standing
there, stamped letters in hand, waiting angrily for a Postal employee
to show up so they could complain about the lack of a drop slot.
I don't recall any trash receptacle resembling a mail box - I imagine
the PO would get pretty upset about that. They probably get enough
trash dropped in the mail boxes as it is, without the additional
encouragement.
--JB
Ray Heindl
<3A8465A4...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART>:
>A neighborhood I lived in suffered from a related game: bash the trash
>can. After garbage pickup, the empty cans are left strewn about front
>yards until homeowners get home and put them away. Vandals in Jeeps
>drive along the front yards (no fences) and ram the empty cans with
>their reinforced front bumpers, sending them flying. One homeowner
>put an end to this by setting out a decoy trash can filled with
>concrete. The Jeep was demolished and the riders went to hospital,
>then jail.
Ouch! Nowadays in the US I imagine the homeowner would be the one
going to jail, or at least to court.
I heard a similar story about a radio call-in program years ago.
Someone called in and said he was really bummed. The host asked why,
and the caller described how he'd been driving along the local
interstate knocking over the orange barrels, and somebody put cement in
one of them!
--
Ray Heindl
JB
>
> job...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART (JB) wrote in
> <3A8465A4...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART>:
>
> >A neighborhood I lived in suffered from a related game: bash the trash
> >can. After garbage pickup, the empty cans are left strewn about front
> >yards until homeowners get home and put them away. Vandals in Jeeps
> >drive along the front yards (no fences) and ram the empty cans with
> >their reinforced front bumpers, sending them flying. One homeowner
> >put an end to this by setting out a decoy trash can filled with
> >concrete. The Jeep was demolished and the riders went to hospital,
> >then jail.
>
> Ouch! Nowadays in the US I imagine the homeowner would be the one
> going to jail, or at least to court.
Maybe. The perps had to trespass on private property to do their
deed. They would drive across the homeowners' front lawns to get to
the trash cans, inflicting damage to the lawns in the process.
Probably it would come down to the "attractive nuisance" concept. If
vehicular trash-can bashing became a widespread and commonly known
activity, such that a homeowner could expect its occurring, then maybe
a decoy concrete-filled can becomes an attractive nuisance, an
irresistible and dangerous lure to bashers who would then be protected
by law.
Something similar occurred some years ago. A farmer got tired of
repeated burglaries of a remote outbuilding, so he rigged a booby trap
shotgun arranged to shoot anyone entering the door. It shot a
burglar, who unfortunately didn't die, and the farmer eventually lost
the farm to the burglar through the courts.
What a sorry state of [legal] affairs.
--JB
Kelly
>
> job...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART (JB) wrote in
> <3A8465A4...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART>:
>
> >A neighborhood I lived in suffered from a related game: bash the trash
> >can. After garbage pickup, the empty cans are left strewn about front
> >yards until homeowners get home and put them away. Vandals in Jeeps
> >drive along the front yards (no fences) and ram the empty cans with
> >their reinforced front bumpers, sending them flying. One homeowner
> >put an end to this by setting out a decoy trash can filled with
> >concrete. The Jeep was demolished and the riders went to hospital,
> >then jail.
>
That really wasn't a nice thing to do. Didn't they realize someone
could get hurt? The correct thing to do would have been to fill the can
with quick drying paint!
JB
>
> Ray Heindl wrote:
> >
> > job...@carolina.rr.comTRIMTHISPART (JB) wrote in
> > >A neighborhood I lived in suffered from a related game: bash the trash
> > >can. After garbage pickup, the empty cans are left strewn about front
> > >yards until homeowners get home and put them away. Vandals in Jeeps
> > >drive along the front yards (no fences) and ram the empty cans with
> > >their reinforced front bumpers, sending them flying. One homeowner
> > >put an end to this by setting out a decoy trash can filled with
> > >concrete. The Jeep was demolished and the riders went to hospital,
> > >then jail.
> >
>
> That really wasn't a nice thing to do.
The trash can bashing wasn't a nice thing to do either - and it
happened repeatedly.
> Didn't they realize someone
> could get hurt?
Yeah, well. Trespassers take their chances. This happened in
Houston, where the police will advise you that if you shoot a prowler,
drag his body into your house and you will not be charged.
> The correct thing to do would have been to fill the can
> with quick drying paint!
But the impact would scatter paint all over the yard, driveway, maybe
the house and nearby parked cars. Remember these fellows were driving
across the houses' front yards, not in the street.
But I agree the concrete was pretty drastic. Had I been doing it, I
would have tried using a couple of concrete blocks at the bottom of a
trash can instead of filling it with concrete. This would probably
damage the vehicle's underside without hurting anybody. Besides, a
concrete-filled trash can weighs so much that it is difficult to
dispose of once its usefulness is past. :-)
--JB
Roberta Davies
>
> In article <95tq7i$2s0p$1...@gavrilo.mtu.ru>, Anatoly Kurilin
> <akur...@mtu-net.ru> wrote:
> > Thanks for the promt reply, but do you still call the mail box on the
> > door of an appartment "letter box" or this word combination is not used
> > anymore?
>
> UK
> Postbox - in street for letters to be delivered
> Letter box - in front door for receipt of letters
> Mail box - program construct in computer
>
> In institutions where post is centralised on receipt and placed in racks
> these may be called pigeon holes, letter racks or possibly post racks but
> this naming varies considerably from one institution to another.
"Letterbox" is also used to describe the transmission of
widescreen programmes onto ordinary-screen TV sets. The
full-width programme (usually a feature film) is shown across the
middle of the screen, with black background above and below.
This is described as "letterbox" because the proportions are
roughly the same as a letterbox in a door.
Note that a letterbox in a door is not a box, just a slot with a
cover. You can buy a little cage to fit on the inside of the
door, if you like, to catch the letters as they come through.
Useful, I suppose, for those with dogs or small children.
Robbie
Polar
<roberta...@virgin.net> wrote:
[...]
>Note that a letterbox in a door is not a box, just a slot with a
>cover. You can buy a little cage to fit on the inside of the
>door, if you like, to catch the letters as they come through.
>Useful, I suppose, for those with dogs or small children.
If made with strong enough metal, useful for limiting
the scope of a bomb explosion.
Or not? Maybe shrapnel would do more harm?
--
Polar
M.J.Powell
<roberta...@virgin.net> writes
You mean if they haven't got a key?
Mike
--
M.J.Powell
Ray Heindl
<3A889083...@virgin.net>:
>"Letterbox" is also used to describe the transmission of
>widescreen programmes onto ordinary-screen TV sets. The
>full-width programme (usually a feature film) is shown across the
>middle of the screen, with black background above and below.
>This is described as "letterbox" because the proportions are
>roughly the same as a letterbox in a door.
The letterbox format is also used for HDTV broadcasts to non-HD
receivers. Or for normal broadcasts that want to look hip.
>Note that a letterbox in a door is not a box, just a slot with a
>cover. You can buy a little cage to fit on the inside of the
>door, if you like, to catch the letters as they come through.
>Useful, I suppose, for those with dogs or small children.
Why would a slot be called a box? I've always called those
'mailslots'. Or maybe 'mail slots'; when I say it I can't tell if
there's a space in it or not.
--
Ray Heindl
Roberta Davies
>
> >Note that a letterbox in a door is not a box, just a slot with a
> >cover. You can buy a little cage to fit on the inside of the
> >door, if you like, to catch the letters as they come through.
> >Useful, I suppose, for those with dogs or small children.
>
> You mean if they haven't got a key?
Only if they're very small. And thin.
Robbie
(happy to be back after a couple of weeks' solid graft)