postmark

US/ˈpoʊstˌmɑɹk/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,481 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: postmarks

A postmark is the stamped mark showing where and when it was posted. Check the postmark, a London postmark, postmarked yesterday.

It cancels the stamp so it cannot be used again, and it dates the letter, which is why courts and competitions rely on it: postmarked by a date is a legal test. Collectors study them, and a rare postmark can be worth more than the stamp under it.

Definitions of postmark

1nounpostmarkThe stamped mark showing where and when it was posted.B2+
“The postmark showed that the letter had been sent from Paris two weeks earlier.”

postmark is a mark.

Where it comes from

Post plus mark, from the eighteenth century, when postal services began cancelling stamps.

Compound of post + mark.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Bank & Post Office

Practise this word

postmark in the wild

Modern postmarks are often applied simultaneously with the cancellation or killer that marks postage stamps as having been used.
Postmark
Postmarks may be applied by handstamp or machine, using methods such as rollers or inkjets, while digital postmarks are a recent innovation.
Postmark
Depending on the policy of the nation issuing the stamp, official first day postmarks may sometimes be applied to covers weeks or months after the date indicated.
First day of issue
Covers that are postmarked at sea or their next port of call will carry what is known as a paquebot postmark.
First day of issue
The ideal bullseye has the entire postmark inside the margins, although this is not always possible, because the stamp may be too small or the postmark too large.
Bullseye (philately)

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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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