Mailing

How to spell mailing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mailing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mailing mean?

1. nounThe act of sending letters, parcels, or other items through the postal system.
2. nounA batch of letters or promotional material sent to many recipients at once.

Mailing in a sentence

• The mailing of the invoices was delayed by the holiday backlog.

• The charity's annual mailing reached over fifty thousand households.

• Prompt mailing of the contract ensured it arrived before the deadline.

• Each mailing included a brochure and a return envelope.

Where does mailing come from?

Language of origin: French

The base word mail traces back to the Old French male, meaning a travelling bag or pouch, which itself came from a Germanic root for a leather satchel. When letters and parcels were carried in such bags by riders, the bag gave its name to the contents, so by the 1600s mail had come to mean the post itself rather than the pouch that held it. The form mailing is the regular verbal noun, made simply by adding the suffix -ing to the verb mail. Because mail ends in a vowel followed by a single l, the l is not doubled when -ing is added, which is the main spelling point worth remembering. The same pouch ancestor survives in the word mallet's relatives and, more clearly, in the old sense of mail as armour, though that is a separate word borrowed from a different French source.

How the word is built

• mail (postal correspondence)
• -ing (verbal noun / present participle suffix)