Dictionary

dead letter en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio

Meanings

1. An item of mail that cannot be delivered to its intended recipient; after some time it is returned to the sender, or destroyed.
2. A law or other measure that is no longer enforced.
   • But since, in all these states, the grand juries and the courts refuse to act, the laws are dead letters. 1932, Harry Haywood, Milton Howard, Lynching: A Weapon of National Oppression, page 12:
   • Playing-cards — the devil's picture-books — were hated by the Puritans like the very devil; […] The fine for selling these cards must have been a dead letter, for we find in the newspapers proof of the prevalence of card-playing. 1894, Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England, page 239:
   • Laws are a dead letter, without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. 1787, Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, Federalist no. 22
   • 1905, Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese, Railways The most formidable obstacle in the way of Japanese railway enterprise is that conflicting interests and local intrigues are apt to render the law of expropriation for public benefit little more than a dead letter.
3. (broadly) Anything that has lost its authority or influence despite still being in existence or formally in force.
   • I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity. 1833, Edgar Allan Poe, MS. Found in a Bottle:

Forms

Deriveds

dead letter office

Relateds

letter of the law

Translations (17)

fi perille toimittamaton kirje (item of mail) · cmn 具文 (anything that has lost its authority or influence) · es letra muerta (law or other measure that is no longer enforced) · cmn 死信 (item of mail) · fi kuollut kirjain (law or other measure that is no longer enforced) · pt letra morta (law or other measure that is no longer enforced) · cmn 失效法規 /失效法规 (law or other measure that is no longer enforced) · cmn 盲信 (item of mail) · cmn 瞎信 (item of mail) · cmn 空文 (anything that has lost its authority or influence) · es papel mojado (law or other measure that is no longer enforced) · nl dode letter (law or other measure that is no longer enforced) · nl onbestelbaar poststuk (item of mail) · cmn 廢法 /废法 (law or other measure that is no longer enforced) · nl rebuut (item of mail) · fr n'habite pas à l'adresse indiquée (item of mail) · fi kuollut kirjain (anything that has lost its authority or influence)