Wordfinder

Dead-letter definition

An unclaimed or undelivered letter that after a period of time is destroyed or returned to the sender by the postal service.
noun
0
0
A law, rule, or precedent still formally in effect but no longer valid or enforced.
noun
0
0
A law, practice, etc. no longer enforced or operative but not formally done away with.
noun
0
0
A letter that cannot be delivered or returned, as because of incorrect address and lack of return address.
noun
0
0
An item of mail that cannot be delivered to its intended recipient; after some time it is returned to the sender, or destroyed.
noun
0
0
Advertisement
(by extension) A law that is no longer enforced.
noun
0
0

Other Word Forms

Noun

Singular:
dead-letter
Plural:
dead letters

Dead-letter 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.

  • This result revolted public opinion; the bishops acquired the habit (rendered easier by the personal expense involved in setting the law in motion) of vetoing, under the power given to them in the act, all prosecutions; and the act became a dead letter.

More sentences

Related articles

Words near dead-letter in the Dictionary