Airmail

Definitions: Airmail

Airmail

Noun

1. Letters and packages that are transported by aircraft.

2. A system of conveying mail by aircraft.

Verb

1. Send or transport by airmail; "Letters to Europe from the U.S. are best airmailed".

Specialty Definitions: Airmail

Domain	Definitions
Post & Telecom	In May, 1918, the first -- route in the United States was established between Washington, D. C. , and New York City. Source: European Union. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Airmail

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Airmail (or air mail) is mail that is transported by aircraft. It typically arrives more quickly than surface mail, and costs more to send. Airmail may be the only option for sending mail to some destinations, such as overseas, if the mail cannot wait the time it would take to arrive by ship, sometimes weeks. A postal service may sometimes opt to transport some regular mail by air, perhaps because other transportation is unavailable, but it is usually impossible to know this by examining an envelope, and such items are not considered "airmail".

A letter sent by airmail may be called an aerogramme, aerogram, air letter or simply airmail letter.

The choice to send a letter by air is indicated either by a handwritten note on the envelope, by the use of special labels called airmail etiquettes, or by the use of specially-marked envelopes. Special postage stamps may also be available, or required; the rules vary in different countries.

The study of airmail is known as aerophilately.

History

Although carrier pigeons had long been used to send messages (an activity known as pigeon mail), the first mail to be carried by an air vehicle was on 7 January 1785, on a balloon flight from Dover to France near Calais. Balloons also carried mail out of Paris and Metz during the Franco-Prussian War (1870), drifting over the heads of the Germans besieging those cities. Balloon mail was also carried on an 1877 flight in Nashville, Tennessee.

The introduction of the airplane in 1903 generated immediate interest in using them for mail transport, and the first official flight took place on 18 February 1911 in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet carried 6,500 letters a distance of 13 km. Many other flights, such as that of the Vin Fiz Flyer, ended in disaster, but many countries had operating services by the 1920s.

Since stamp collecting was already a well-developed hobby by this time, collectors followed developments in airmail service closely, and went to some trouble to find out about the first flights between various destinations, and to get letters onto them. The authorities often used special cachets on the covers, and in many cases the pilot would sign them as well.

The dirigibles of the 1920s and 1930s also carried airmail, known as dirigible mail. The German zeppelins were especially visible in this role, and many countries issued special stamps for use on zeppelin mail.

In the 1950s, general enthusiasm for rockets led to experiments with rocket mail. There was a single use of Missile Mail by the United States in 1959; see: USS Barbero. None of the various schemes went into production use, although many souvenir covers exist. A number of spacecraft have also carried space mail, sometimes in rather large quantities, all unabashedly for promotional purposes. The study of these is known as astrophilately.

In the United States, separate higher priced postage stamps were long required for domestic airmail, but in 1977 the United States Postal Service initiated all domestic first class mail, land or air, would be delivered by the most speedy practical option for a standard first class stamp.

External link

Info on early airmail service

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Airmail."

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Synonym: Airmail

Synonym: airpost (n). (additional references)

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Crosswords: Airmail

English words defined with "airmail": aerophilatelic, aerophilately, airmail letter, airmailer. (references)

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Modern Usage: Airmail

Domain

Usage

Movie/TV Titles

The Airmail Mystery (1932)

Airmail (1932)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Airmail

Domain	Title
Books	Airline Executives and Federal Regulation: Cases Studies in American Enterprise from the Airmail Era to the Dawn of the Jet Age (reference) Airmail Antics (reference) Airmail to the Moon (reference) Goggles, helmets, and airmail stamps (reference) Mapa: Airmail Paintings/Pinturas Aeropostales (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Image Slideshow: Airmail

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Photo Album: Airmail

Thumbnail	Description & Credit	Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	A Norseman airplane delivering the mail. All mail was airmail in the Arctic field camps.Credit: Paths Less Taken - NOAA at the Ends of the Earth.		[Boy (head-and-shoulders portrait, facing left) placing a postage stamp on an airmail package] Esther Bubley.Credit: National Library of Medicine.
	New invention for dropping airmail sacks to earth from speeding plane.Credit: Library of Congress.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Airmail

Subject	Topic	Quote
Economic History	Syria	Please note that mail in Syria is not always reliable and regular airmail takes a minimum of 2 weeks to arrive from the U.S. Several parcel and mail delivery companies, including DHL, Skypak, Federal Express, UPS, and TNT provide service to Syria. (references)
Trade	South Africa	Payment can be made via transmission or airmail depending on the reimbursement clauses. (references)
Travel	South Africa	Airmail from the US is slow, it can take anything between 2 to 3 weeks. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Airmail

"Airmail" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 94.74% of the time. "Airmail" is used about 38 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	94.74%	36	57,479
Lexical Verb (infinitive)	2.63%	1	339,140
Lexical Verb (base form)	2.63%	1	339,140
Total	100.00%	38	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: Airmail

Expressions using "airmail": airmail letter ♦ by airmail ♦ surcharged airmail. Additional references.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Airmail

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day
airmail	135
airmail mweb	32
airmail mweb.co.za	20
airmail verizon	8
airmail registered	5
airmail envelope	5
airmail stamp us	3
airmail canada rate	3
airmail us	3
usps airmail	3
airmail international	3
airmail parcel post	2
airmail stamp	2
airmail paper	2
airmail express uk usa	2
airmail rate	2
airmail tracking	2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translations: Airmail

Language		Translations for "airmail"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Afrikaan		lugpos (air-mail). (various references)

Arabic		‏بريد جوي. (various references)

Chinese		航空郵件 , 航寄. (various references)

Danish		luftpost (aerogramme, air letter). (various references)

Dutch		luchtpostzendingen, luchtpost (air-mail). (various references)

Esperanto		aerpoŝto. (various references)

Farsi		پست هواءی . (various references)

Finnish		lentoposti. (various references)

French		poste aérienne (air mail). (various references)

Frisian		loftpost. (various references)

German		Luftpost (A.M., aerogram, Air Mail, air-mail). (various references)

Greek		αεροπορικό ταχυδρομείο. (various references)

Hungarian		légiposta (air mail, par avion). (various references)

Italian		posta aerea (air mail). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		飛行便 , 航空郵便 (air transport). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		ひ�"うび�", �"うくうゆうび�" (air transport). (various references)

Korean		항공우편. (various references)

Manx		post aer (air post). (various references)

Norwegian		luftpost (air-mail). (various references)

Pig Latin		airmailay

Portuguese		via aérea (airway, ICAO), por via aérea, correio aéreo (air-mail). (various references)

Russian		авиапочта (air mail). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		avionska pošta, vazdušna pošta. (various references)

Spanish		correo aéreo (air express). (various references)

Swedish		flygpost (air mail). (various references)

Tagalog		air mail. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Airmail

Derivations
	Words beginning with "airmail": airmailed, airmailing, airmails. (additional references)
Misspellings
	"Airmail" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: airmix, Amirali. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Rhyming with "Airmail"

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "airmail" (pronounced e"rmā'l)
3	-m ā' l	blackmail, female, greenmail.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: Airmail

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-a-i-i-l-m-r"
	-2 letters: aalii, alarm, laari, lamia, malar, maria, milia.
	-3 letters: alar, alma, amia, amir, aria, aril, ilia, lair, lama, lari, liar, lima, lira, liri, maar, mail, mair, marl, miri, raia, rail, rami, rial.
	-4 letters: aal, ail, aim, air, ala, ama, ami, arm, lam, lar, mar, mil, mir, ram, ria, rim.
	-5 letters: aa, ai, al, am, ar.
	Words containing the letters "a-a-i-i-l-m-r"
	+1 letter: airmails, familiar, miliaria.
	+2 letters: airmailed, animalier, familiars, impartial, laminaria, laminarin, luminaria, miliarial, miliarias, militaria, primatial, racialism.
	+3 letters: airmailing, animaliers, familiarly, immaterial, laminarian, laminarias, laminarins, luminarias, marginalia, matricidal, miracidial, plagiarism, racialisms, radicalism, unfamiliar.
	+4 letters: admiralties, albuminuria, amoralities, antimalaria, antirealism, assimilator, biomaterial, bipyramidal, biracialism, cavalierism, diametrical, familiarise, familiarity, familiarize, imaginarily, impartially, impractical, lacrimation, laminarians, liquidambar, madrigalian, madrigalist, magisterial, manorialism, marginality, marginalize, materialise, materialism, materialist, materiality, materialize, matrilineal, matrimonial, maxillaries, memorabilia, migrational, millenarian, milliradian, multiracial, patrimonial, plagiarisms, pyramidical, radicalisms, rationalism.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.