English

A post box in Salem, Tamil Nadu, India

An old-fashioned posting box or post box outside the main post office along St Aldate's, Oxford, United Kingdom

Alternative forms

• post-box, postbox

Noun

post box ‎(plural post boxes)

1. A box in which post can be left by a sender to be picked up by a courier or postman (postal worker).

   Would you take these letters down to the post box please – they've already got stamps.

   • 2000, Peter Vervest; Al Dunn, How to Win Customers in the Digital World: Total Action or Fatal Inaction, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-66575-5, page 203:

     Many large organisations have post box numbers. Mail from anywhere in the country is collected and delivered to this one address. What more could Post do to provide further value? While delivery of the mail to the post box is reliable, there are subsequent delays of, at times, a week before the mail arrives at the desk of the person within the recipient organisation.

   • 2006, George Winterton, editor, State Constitutional Landmarks, Sydney: Federation Press, ISBN 978-1-86287-607-1, page 291:

     The "post-box solution" was a proposal that the Commonwealth Prime Minister act as a "post-box", passing on State advice to the Queen without altering it or commenting on it. The Queen would receive advice from one source only, but it would be the States that were effectively advising the Queen on State matters. This solution was satisfactory to the British Government, Buckingham Palace and the Governor-General.

   • 2008, Stella Duffy, chapter 33, in The Room of Lost Things, London: Virago Press, ISBN 978-1-84408-212-4:

     And so Helen had been running and not thinking clearly and, pushing one envelope through the slot in the postbox, she turned swiftly to walk into Robert's shop.

   • 2008, Steven P. Moysey, The Road to Balcombe Street: The IRA Reign of Terror in London, Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, ISBN 978-0-7890-2912-6, page 58:

     Three small gelignite bombs, with pocket watch timing devices, were concealed in packets small enough to fit through the slot of the standard cast-iron post box, the cylindrical bright red colored boxes so common throughout London.

Usage notes

A post box is sometimes also known as a letterbox, which may be slightly confusing because a letterbox is also the box or slot into which a courier or postal worker puts letters for a recipient to collect.

Synonyms

• (in some uses) letterbox
• mailbox

Translations

Anagrams

• boxtops