A letter box, letterbox, letter plate, letter hole, deed, mail slot, or mailbox is a receptacle for receiving incoming mail at a private residence or business. For the opposite purpose of collating outgoing mail, a post box is generally used instead.
Letterboxes or mailboxes consist of four primary designs:
- A slot in a wall or door through which mail is delivered (through-door delivery)
- A box attached directly to the house (door-to-door delivery)
- A box mounted at or near the street (curbside delivery)
- A centralised mail delivery station consisting of individual mailboxes for an entire building
- A centralised mail delivery station consisting of individual mailboxes for multiple recipients at multiple addresses in a particular neighborhood or community
Read more about Letter Box: Styles and Usage
Famous quotes containing the words letter and/or box:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)