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Common usage in the UK is that a postman of the Royal Mail Service delivers the post, and someone may post a letter (see BrE Ngram), whereas in the USA, usage has become equally common that a mailman of the United States Post Office delivers the mail (AmE Ngram). Why do both forms of English have the same two words and have parallel but reversed inconsistencies between the name of the Service and the objects manipulated by that Service? And what do Canadians do? (There's no "Canadian English" option in Ngram!)

James Waldby - jwpat7
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N.A.Neff
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    Etymonline says "In 19c. England, mail was letters going abroad, while home dispatches were post." – Peter Shor Aug 10 '14 at 15:51
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    I'm not convinced this distinction even exists. There's a Post Office in the UK too - it just so happens the organistion responsible for actual delivery is call Royal Mail. But I see no evidence that AmE is any more likely than BrE to speak of someone who delivers the post**. On both sides of the pond, it's almost always delivers the mail**. – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 15:57
  • @FumbleFingers I believe that there is a PhD for you to be earned following the publication of your controlled, double-blind study definitively proving that the difference betwixt hither and yon lies in how cisatlantic postmen always ring twice, whilst transatlantic postmen may at whiles ring thrice. – tchrist Aug 10 '14 at 16:04
  • Nancy, where do you live by the way? As Fumble pointed out - it's simply not the case, I'd say. They both use both words pretty much interchangeably. – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 16:06
  • @FumbleFingers-- Maybe you misunderstood my OP. What I have observed is that AmE is less likely to speak of someone who delivers the post. Re the general gist of your comment--maybe it's regional within the US whether "mail" vs. "post" is used. – N.A.Neff Aug 10 '14 at 16:12
  • @JoeBlow -- born in PA, raised in OH, undergrad in MI, grad in NYC, a year in Nebraska, and now live in CT, but see your point--maybe it's regional. (I was editing my comment as you posted yours :-) – N.A.Neff Aug 10 '14 at 16:14
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    @tchrist: Surely from your cisatlantic perspective, you should be more concerned that your fellow countrymen produced The Postman* Always Rings Twice*. That should have been the British remake of a Hollywood original called The Mailman* Always Rings Twice*. – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 16:24
  • @Nancy: I fully accept that AmE uses "mail" more extensively than BrE in this sense. But per my preceding comment, even though *mailman* is virtually unknown in BrE, it's not the "universal standard" in AmE (or at least, wasn't, when that movie was made in the 40s). – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 16:27
  • @FumbleFingers This is all part of an atemporal, locative variant of the recency illusion that I like to call the *locality delusion*. If me and my best buds don’t say it, no one holding the same passport as me says it neither. – tchrist Aug 10 '14 at 16:30
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    I think someone needs to answer Nancy's question, why the "parallel ("reversed") inconsistences between the name of the Service and the objects manipulated by that Service" ...? – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 16:33
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    A BrE Ngram search (sorry, the search URL is too long for a comment) shows post as a noun much more common than mail, and as a verb about twice as common. An AmE Ngram shows much the same pattern until the 20th century, when post and mail as verbs became equally frequent and, in the last quarter of the century, mail as a noun took off and is now almost as frequently used as post. So there is a clear difference in frequency between the two in current usage, although there is not the absolute pattern I thought I had observed. – N.A.Neff Aug 10 '14 at 16:37
  • @Joe: Per my first comment, the names of the delivery services are a matter of historical accident. Apart from that I think this "parallel/reversed" idea is spurious. The difference is that mail has more "reach" in AmE than BrE for the specific context (they have more mailmen, and quite probably more mailrooms in office buildings, where BrE is more likely to have postmen, postrooms). – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 16:39
  • @Nancy: Absolutely. If you could edit the OP to reflect what you now recognise, we might more usefully be able to address exactly why Americans today are more likely to read the mail over breakfast, where their British counterparts are more likely (I put it no stronger than that) to read the post. The AmE shift seems more marked after WW2, and may owe something to Peter Shor's initial comment here. – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 16:43
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    @tchrist -- hey! re the locality delusion: your comment seems a little belittling. Please be gentle with a newbie. I'm very widely read, so I'm not sure what the basis for my lack of awareness of the frequency of "post" in the US, but my observation was largely correct about the UK. – N.A.Neff Aug 10 '14 at 16:45
  • @FumbleFingers -- will do, thanks for the pointer. – N.A.Neff Aug 10 '14 at 16:46
  • You’ve asked a “why” question. The problem is that “why” questions about language trends and per-locale shifts are rather rarely answerable. – tchrist Aug 10 '14 at 16:48
  • Fumble -- fair enough, you're saying the reversed idea is spurious. But just possibly could it be that a less-used term is more "posh"; and that applies in both places; hence the "reversal"? You know what would be tops: if someone could identify some other 'paired inversion' like that. You know, like you can easily list say "false friends" in English-French folk-translation. I wonder if anyone's ever spotted any (non-spurious .. or even another spurious example!) of 'an inverted pair' like that in bee/ame. Maybe ... ?? – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 16:52
  • What about something like "brits call a whole car, a 'motor', but yanks call a whole car an 'auto'..." maybe. I'm reaching :) – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 16:54
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    @tchrist: It may be "just one of those things", but I still think the question is worth asking (the underlying "Why is there any US/UK difference at all?", not the "Why are the US/UK meanings reversed?" misapprehension). I myself am surprised to find that according to NGrams, *mailbox* was far more common than *postbox* even in BrE 50 years ago (I almost always put my letters in the postbox, and it's disconcerting to think most of my fellow countrymen have been using mailbox throughout my life without me even noticing). – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 16:55
  • On the spurious front, note too that this question for example ... http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/154057 ... really for me ended up in the basket "spurious, there is no such distinction" – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 16:57
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    There's a huge problem in using ngrams here, as we're talking about spoken language. ngrams are admirable, but of no value or relevance in any way for spoken language; indeed they sometimes cause confusion. – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 17:00
  • @Joe: My "spurious" there might have been a bit ott. I'm disagreeing with the idea that AmE/BrE usage here can meaningfully be called "reversed" in respect of the two words, but there's no doubt in my mind that AmE tends to use mail in a broader range of contexts than BrE. – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 17:01
  • @FumbleFingers This may be a purely personal idiosyncrasy that no one else in the world but me holds with, but I have a wee bit of a feeling that for me, the large and colorful public boxes for outgoing letters, like the ones outside a post office, I am more apt to call postboxes, whereas the little tiny ones that people have at their homes for receiving incoming letters I think of as mailboxes. – tchrist Aug 10 '14 at 17:02
  • @tchrist: We don't normally have those "mailboxes" at the curtilage (we expect the postman and paperboy to deliver to the house, not just the edge of the property). So for us the incoming mail goes in the *letterbox* (not a "box" at all - it's a hinged flap on the front door through which the postman pushes the letters). – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 17:07
  • @FumbleFingers My mailbox is attached to my front porch; it’s not down the lane by the road, although I have seen that along rural routes. – tchrist Aug 10 '14 at 17:09
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    ...but only America has a *letterman* – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 17:10
  • @tchrist: I may be wrong on this, but I suspect people who live in high-rise apartments in the UK are much more likely to have a letterbox on their (internal) front door than Americans in similar accommodation. Probably because the US delivery services have historically had to deal with a far higher percentage of relatively inaccessible addressees (in a bigger country, with more people who define "quality of life" in terms of how far away the neighbours' houses are). – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 17:15
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    @FumbleFingers The word is not postbox it is letter box and they are painted red. (In the Republic of Ireland they kept them all, with the Sovereign's insignia, but just painted them green.) 'Please pop these in the letter box for me.' When I was in America no one knew what a letter box was. – WS2 Aug 10 '14 at 17:27
  • Your point is that brits very generally tend to have their mailbox (indeed slot) in a door. (Indeed, in the front door.) For yanks it tends to be literally a "box" somewhere convenient for the mailman; that is to say "on the street" "altogether at the foot of the building" "at the local farm corner" or whatever. – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 17:28
  • re letterman i thought you meant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterman_(sports) (e.g., see the movie Grease, say) – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 17:30
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    @JoeBlow But does the US Post Office have a 'universal service obligation'? There has been huge argument over that in the UK since they announced the privatisation of the Royal Mail. The USO is the rule which says that the Post Office has to make the same charge (based on weight and size of package) irrespective of where the item is going. So if a letter has to be delivered to an outlying Scottish island, and the postman has to drive five miles up an unmade road to a single address, the value of the stamp is identical to that of a letter delivered to a tower block in a city. – WS2 Aug 10 '14 at 17:33
  • I have no idea: I recommend (a) leaving both countires/regions immediately; (b) using only private Ayn-Rand-esque courier services. My take! – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 17:34
  • Hey don't the Aussies pretty much ONLY use "post" ("the postie" etc.) – Fattie Aug 10 '14 at 17:35
  • @WS2, yes the USPS has a "universal service obligation", just as you describe it. (Only in our case the example used is flying a parcel into a remote homestead in Alaska...same cost as in the lower 48.) – N.A.Neff Aug 10 '14 at 17:36
  • @WS2: You don't need to fret just because you live in "darkest Norfolk". The universal service is currently a legal obligation for newly-privatised Royal Mail, and I can't see that changing any time soon. You should be more concerned that in future you may find when you buy things on eBay you may not qualify for "free Post & Packing" unless you live in a densely-populated area. Which is no different in principle to the fact that people in London can more easily get faster/cheaper broadband than many out in the provinces. – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 17:38
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    @JoeBlow Posties and Milkies arrive daily Down Under. (Or at least they used to). They mostly wear shorts and seem to choose the job because of the fitness they derive from running upstairs carrying heavy packages. Even so they lost heavily versus GB in the Olympic Games and England just slaughtered them in the Commonwealth Games. They have basically gone soft and fat and are turning into a nation of losers. That should wake the buggers up! – WS2 Aug 10 '14 at 17:38
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    @FumbleFingers Sitting in the evening sunshine by the River Bure, it is pure bliss. Nothing dark about Norfolk, except that about three hours ago Hurricane Bertha deposited what must have been a month's rainfall in 45 minutes. – WS2 Aug 10 '14 at 17:43
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    @WS2: We had hail from Hurricane Bertha a few hours ago! But I suspect a mod will be by shortly to tidy up this comment thread. (Not that it's all Off Topic, but I can see how a couple of Brits discussing the weather might be seen as "less than totally relevant" to the question being asked! :) – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 17:49
  • @WS2 I do not mean to deny the authenticity of your own experience — I am perfectly certain you are right that nobody you encountered here knew what a letter box might be — but I nonetheless find it perplexing. I would hope that any native speaker would quickly apprehend its obvious meaning without the least hiccup or confusion. I find the term completely unremarkable, so much so that I might well use it myself without even noticing. But I am not a good representative of my own country. – tchrist Aug 10 '14 at 19:02
  • @JoeBlow That letter box in the door, especially the ones low down, have accounted for the fingers of multiple postmen over the years. It is the little wire-haired fox terrier dogs that sit there ready to de-digitise the postman the moment his fingers cross into the dog's territory. – WS2 Aug 10 '14 at 19:41
  • @Peter Logically, that could explain why the UK focuses on the Postal Service (people being quite insular here) but we have airmail and surface-mail. Presumably, proportionately more letters were written abroad in the US than in the UK in the service's infancy. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 10 '14 at 19:54
  • It's interesting (but probably not very helpful) to note that the US Constitution authorizes Congress to establish "post offices and post roads". – Hot Licks Dec 15 '16 at 17:55

1 Answers1

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I feel the consensus opinion is that

(1) it's possibly/probably true that "mail" is used more - in general - in the USA than in Britain. I really feel that's about all you can say about usage in bre/ame in this case.

(2) the specific, clean 'reversal' you point out (mail/post on one side, post/mail on the other) is probably spurious; it does not exist.

(3) it's very unlikely there would be a clean explanation of any difference in usage of the words; fwiw nobody at hand has one or could find one :O

I fear that's it!

Fattie
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    OED says of the relevant verb sense for *mail* trans. orig. U.S. To send by post, to post. Also with in, off, out. The more usual word in the United Kingdom is post. It also says that particular usage derives from the noun sense A bag, pack, or wallet; a travelling bag, a portmanteau. In later use Sc. and U.S. in pl.: baggage (a definition which was previously unknown to me until I've just looked it up). – FumbleFingers Aug 10 '14 at 17:43
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    @FumbleFingers Being serious (as we should be) I suspect the UK side of things is firmly in the two terms. "Mail" is letters and stuff, hence The Royal Mail is The Kings letters and stuff. "Post" is the process of delivery, hence Postmaster General, postman, postage and post-haste. – Frank Aug 10 '14 at 18:17
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    You know I really fear that, for example, what you say there Frank - it's a bit of a "reach" on this one you know? It's just not that clear cut. Also, I just dunno that I am with the OED on "The more usual word in the United Kingdom is post" - similarly. Word usage change so dramatically (wot with this modern TV and stuff). I mean I bet 50% of people in the UK now say "officer" to a constable when they get stopped up for speeding, you know. It's a big mish-mash. – Fattie Aug 11 '14 at 06:53