mail

noun

1. (countable, regional, uncountable)A bag or wallet.

   “What, loo, man, see here of dyce a bale; / A brydelynge caste for that is in thy male!”

   “Open the Males, yet guard the treaſure ſure. Lay out our golden wedges to the view, That their reflexions may amaze the Perſeans.”

2. (countable, uncountable)A bag containing letters to be delivered by post.
3. (countable, uncountable)The (physical) material conveyed by the postal service.

   “Meronym: mailpiece”

   “Don't forget to pick up the mail on your way.”

   “1823, The stranger in Liverpool; or, An historical and descriptive view of the town of Liverpool and its environs, Seventh Edition, T. Kaye, page 96, The following are the hours at which the letter-box of this office is closed for making up the several mails, and the hours at which each mail is despatched: ¶ […]”

   “1887, John Houston Merrill (editor), The American and English Encyclopædia of Law, Volume I, Edward Thompson, p.121, If he retains the account, and permits several mails to pass without objecting to it, he will be held to have admitted its correctness.”

   “The transfer by tender of some 1,300 mail bags was effected smartly, and the "Ocean Mails Special" train was ready at 9.19 a.m.”

4. (US, uncountable)The (physical) material conveyed by the postal service.

   “It should be in your mail today, unless the post office lost it!”

5. (countable, dated, uncountable)A stagecoach, train or ship that delivers such post.

   “All trains stop at all stations, with the exception of a few "local" stations near Mombasa and an odd flag stop or two usually missed by the mails.”

   “On the morning after the one-day strike, October 4, one of the Type 4s on crew-training, No. D169, was appropriated to head the 3 a.m. mail to Hull, as no steam locomotive had been lit up and the usual Hull Type 3 was not available; [...].”

   “As he passed though the station, he slowed to yell to the signalman, Frank 'Sailor' Bridges: "Sailor - have you anything between here and Fordham? Where's the mail?" Gimbert knew the mail train was due, and he didn't want to endanger another train with his burning bomb wagon.”

6. (countable, uncountable)The postal service or system in general.

   “He decided to send his declaration by mail.”

7. (uncountable)Electronic mail, e-mail: a computer network–based service for sending, storing, and forwarding electronic messages.

   “Yahoo Mail has been providing mail service since 1997.”

8. (uncountable)Email messages conceived in bulk (as with the analogous sense of physical mail).

   “You've got mail [old audio clip announcing new email in the 1990s-2000s]”

9. (India, countable, especially)An email message.

   “Please look through those mails and confirm whether you received the one about scheduling.”

10. (countable, uncountable)A trunk, box, or bag, in which clothing, etc., may be carried.

    ““Fetch me the little private mail with the padlocks, that I recommended to your particular charge — d'ye hear?””

11. (uncountable, usually)Armour consisting of metal rings linked together.

    “The knight is laid in his mail, only the hands and face being bare.”

    “"That's funny looking mail, Sire," said Eustace. "Aye, lad," said Tirian. "No Narnian dwarf smithied that. […]”

    “Under the sea-girt cliffs the shining ship was readied, laden with coats of mail, swords, and gleaming war harness.”

12. (broadly, uncountable, usually)Armour consisting of small plates linked together.
13. (uncountable, usually)A contrivance of interlinked rings, for rubbing off the loose hemp on lines and white cordage.
14. (uncountable, usually)Any hard protective covering of an animal, as the scales and plates of reptiles, shell of a lobster, etc.

    “We […] strip the lobster of his scarlet mail.”

    “There beryl, pearl, and opal pale, / And metal wrought like fishes' mail, / Buckler and corslet, axe and sword, / And shining spears were laid in hoard.”

15. (obsolete, rare, uncountable, usually)A spot on a bird's feather; by extension, a spotted feather.

    “[T]he moorish-fly: made with the body of duskish wool; and the wings made of the blackish mail of the drake.”

16. (historical)An old French coin worth half a denier.
17. (Scotland)A monetary payment or tribute.
18. (Scotland)Rent.
19. (Scotland)Tax.

verb

1. (ditransitive)To send (a letter, parcel, etc.) through the mail.
2. (ditransitive)To send by electronic mail.

   “Please mail me the spreadsheet by the end of the day.”

   “There has been a crackdown on non-ARPA use of a local ARPA gateway, so I am reluctant to attempt to mail the file to ARPA sites.”

   “Since .mp3's are so big (well for me with a 33.6kp/s connection they are anyway) maybe you should offer on your site to mail the file to people who want it, and have them request it, thus saving your web space, your upload time and their download time […]”

   “If you mail an attachment from one mail client then it does not matter if the receiver uses a different mail client. The mail you send should be able to be read from their mail client.”

3. (transitive)To contact (a person) by electronic mail.

   “I need to mail my tutor about the deadline.”

   “I was horrified but my data was OK. Then, it saw it open my e-mail package and start to mail my friends. I turned the power off.”

   “'Yes, at Quantico. She was so excited by it, she sent all those emails, you remember I told you about it -' 'Yes, she mailed me from there too.'”

   “He mailed me and said he had managed to hack into my email accounts.”

4. (transitive)To arm with mail.
5. (transitive)To pinion.