postage

UK/ˈpəʊstɪd͡ʒ/US/ˈpoʊstɪd͡ʒ/

nounB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,537 of 15,258leans written

Postage is the cost of sending something by post. Postage and packing, pay the postage, postage paid.

Before 1840 the person receiving a letter paid, and the penny post moved the charge to the sender, which is why the stamp exists at all. Postage and packing is the standing phrase for what a shop adds to the price of a parcel.

Definitions of postage

1nounpostageThe cost of sending something by post.B1+
“The book itself was cheap, but the postage to Australia cost more than the book.”

postage is a cost.

Where it comes from

Old English
post
Middle English
post
English
post
English, today
postage

From post + -age. post comes from Middle English post, from Old English post. Middle English post, from Old English post (“pillar, door-post”) and Old French post (“post, upright beam”), both from Latin postis (“door, post, doorpost”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Office & Admin

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postage in the wild

Philately is the study of postage stamps and postal history.
Philately
The first postage stamps did not need to show the issuing country, so no country name was included on them.
Postage stamp
The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system.
Penny Black
To simplify matters, Sir Rowland Hill proposed an adhesive stamp to indicate pre-payment of postage.
Penny Black
The issue and use of adhesive postage stamps continued during the 19th century primarily for first-class mail.
Postage stamps and postal history of the United States

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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