Other forms: mailboxes
A mailbox is the box where your letters are delivered. On a post at the end of a drive, or a slot in the door.
American English uses it for the private box that receives post and the blue one on the street for sending it, which British English splits into a letterbox and a postbox. Email took the word over entirely, and a mailbox is now most often a folder on a screen. Interfering with somebody's mailbox is a serious offence in America, since the boxes are federal property.
1nounmailboxA box in which letters are delivered or posted.
“There were three days of post in the mailbox.”
2nounfolderThe folder where email arrives.
“His mailbox had four hundred unread messages.”
Also accepted in games: letterbox, postbox
From mail + box.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Around the House, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 3 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word