this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Yeah, you're correct in that assumption.
I've only really ever heard of the box outside of someone's home being called a postbox or mailbox. Despite the fact that both terms also refer to the box at the post office where you can put outgoing mail, there's just no separate word for them. And I've only ever heard of the slot on the house door where the mail is placed being called a mail slot.
Letterbox is a completely new term to me in this context... and I still am not quite sure what it would mean, if not a mailbox. Haha.
Letter boxes are sized smaller, for just envelopes/letters. Mailbox is larger for newspapers etc. Small packages, also envolopes.
It's an interesting discussion in general... I've lived in 5 states in the US and mail service isn't necessarily the same across all of them even among similar types of neighborhoods...
For example, in Georgia it's common for every house on a rural residential dirt road to have its own individual (non-lockable) USPS mailbox at the end of their dirt driveway.
In Colorado, on the other hand, it's not uncommon for many of those similar rural dirt road neighborhoods to have a communal (locking) mailbox at the entrance to the dirt road neighborhood similar to what most apartment complexes have.
It's also not uncommon in Colorado or even California for some suburban single family home neighborhoods to have similar communal (lockable) mailboxes but that's less common, in my experience, in most Southeastern states.
I've also lived in an old Victorian building with a mail slot but it had been converted to apartments and had a multi unit locking mailbox bolted to the front of the building at that point.
I don't remember if I had a point or not now other than that shit is weird.