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Glite Dictionary
mail car

mail car

1 3.5
A train carriage where postal workers sort and carry mail while the train moves
  • noun
  • Archaic
translation icon : vagón de correo
  • The crew sorted letters in the mail car while the train traveled across the countryside.

Examples

  • "'I will never be big enough to pull anything but silly old mail cars,'... ...sobbed Huffy."

    Dennis the Menace (1993)

  • Mail car 2105.

    The Newton Boys (1998)

  • During the trip, we passed an old mail car filled with packages ready for delivery.

  • The train included a mail car specifically designed for transporting and sorting mail.

Surface Forms

mail car singular
mail cars plural

Morphology

mail + car

The meaning 'a railway car for transporting and sorting mail' is directly and transparently built from the constituents 'mail' (postal items) + 'car' (rail vehicle); the compound simply names the vehicle used for mail. This noun+noun compositional pattern is common and cross-linguistically obvious, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

The noun mail car comes from old trains: it was a car where workers sorted mail while the train moved. They even used a long hook to catch and drop mail bags without stopping, so the name now means 'a train car for carrying and sorting mail'.