Dead-letter meaning

An unclaimed or undelivered letter that after a period of time is destroyed or returned to the sender by the postal service.
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A law, rule, or precedent still formally in effect but no longer valid or enforced.
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A law, practice, etc. no longer enforced or operative but not formally done away with.
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A letter that cannot be delivered or returned, as because of incorrect address and lack of return address.
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An item of mail that cannot be delivered to its intended recipient; after some time it is returned to the sender, or destroyed.
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(by extension) A law that is no longer enforced.
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Sentence Examples

  • By the terms of the Thirty Years' Truce (445 B.C.) Athens covenanted to restore to Aegina her autonomy, but the clause remained a dead letter.

  • The reforms became more or less a dead letter.

  • The fact that a voluntary society with limited funds must contest the illegal decisions of local councils, without government support, seems likely to render this portion of the act of 1908 a dead letter.

  • True, she now agreed to recognise the independence of the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic and Batavian (Dutch) republics; but the masterful acquisitiveness of the First Consul and the weak conduct of Austrian and British affairs at that time soon made that clause of the treaty a dead letter.

  • Proposals made by the council for the modification and improvement of the existing laws and regulations which concerned it were to receive an answer from the government within six months; this provision has remained a dead letter.

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Words near dead-letter in the Dictionary