post-office

A form of post office — A place (building, office, shop, or counter) concerned with the business of delivering letters, post or mail and selling stamps, etc.

Meanings

nounpost-office (plural post-offices)

plural post-offices

  1. datedDated form of post office.

    For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.

    1854 August 9, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, pages 101–102
    5 more examples

    However, as he kept the post-office, it was imagined he had better opportunities of obtaining news; his paper was thought a better distributer of advertisements than mine, and therefore had many, more, which was a profitable thing to him, and a disadvantage to me; for, tho’ I did indeed receive and send papers by the post, […]

    1771–1790, Benjamin Franklin, “The Autobiography [Part 1]”, in John Bigelow, editor, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. […], Philadelphia, Pa.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott & Co., published 1868, →OCLC, pages 188–189

    The post-office has a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.

    1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter XVI, in Emma: […], volume II, London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC, pages 306–307

    An embezzlement of government money to the extent of about Rs. 2,000 was discovered some time ago in the post-office here, between the baboo, mutsuddy and mohurrer.

    1835 February 28, Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany, page 104

    […] that he and David Whitmer swore falsley, stole, cheated, lied, sold bogus money, (base coin,), and also stones and sand for bogus; that letters in the post-office had been opened, read, and destroyed; and that those same men were concerned with a gang of counterfeiters, coiners, and blacklegs.

    1842, Daniel Parish Kidder, Mormonism and the Mormons: A Historical View of the Rise and Progress of the Sect Self-styled Latter-Day Saints, Carlton & Lanahan

    In all cases of this sort, it will be sufficient, that a letter is put into the post-office early enough after the day of the dishonor of the Note to go by the next post, whether it be a bi-weekly, or tri-weekly, or a mere weekly conveyance, if it be the ordinary mode of communication.

    1845, Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Law of Promissory Notes and Guaranties of Notes and Checks on Banks and Bankers, page 388
Cite this entry
APA

post-office. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/post-office

MLA

“post-office.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/post-office. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “post-office,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/post-office.

Source: post-office on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.