Mails

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /meɪlz/

Definitions

1. A service for delivering letters and packages, including both physical and digital forms of communication; The plural of the operation involving sending and receiving correspondence via established postal routes; Items exchanged through postal services or electronic messaging platforms that facilitate communication between individuals or entities
2. Facilities managing the distribution of mail and packages to recipients ; chain-linked or plated armor worn historically for defense ; numerous examples of postal communication in the form of sent letters or messages
3. Physical letters and parcels sent through postal systems ; protective armor made of interlinked metal rings worn in medieval times

Etymology: The word "mails" is simply the third-person singular form of "mail", and the noun has two unrelated histories that happen to share a spelling. The postal sense comes from a medieval Old French word, "male", meaning a bag or wallet, which passed into Middle English from Anglo-Norman. That bag came from a Frankish word for "bag", ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European term for a leather pouch, so the sense of a container for carrying things is the older idea, and letters and parcels are simply what got carried in it. The armor sense has a different ancestry. Middle English "mayle" was borrowed from Old French "maille", meaning "loop" or "stitch", which goes back through Vulgar Latin "macla" to Latin "macula", meaning "blemish" or "mesh". A coat of mail was thus named for its interlinked rings, a mesh of loops rather than anything to do with posting.

Synonyms: letters, correspondence