Definition
As applied to a letter or other postal item, "mailed" means that the item was properly prepared for transmission through the postal system and placed into the custody of the officer or agent responsible for forwarding the mail. Two conditions must both be satisfied: (1) the letter was properly prepared — addressed, sealed, stamped, or otherwise made ready for postal handling — and (2) it was actually deposited with or delivered to a postal officer or into an official receptacle under postal authority. Mere intent to send, or handing a letter to a private messenger, does not constitute mailing in the legal sense.
In legal contexts, the word most commonly appears in procedural rules governing deadlines and notice (when a document is deemed "mailed" for statute of limitations or filing purposes) and in substantive criminal law, where whether an item was "mailed" determines whether federal mail fraud jurisdiction attaches.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Armoured in, protected by, or made of mail; resembling the scales of armor.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Protected by an external coat or covering of scales or plates.
The common English word "mailed" derives from a completely separate root — the armor-related "mail" — and has no connection to the legal postal sense. A researcher encountering "mailed" in historical documents must resolve which meaning is intended from context. In virtually all legal instruments, statutes, and court records, "mailed" means the postal act, not the armored condition. The overlap is purely orthographic.
Common Confusion
Two distinct meanings of "mailed" create a threshold ambiguity in historical sources. In most legal documents from the nineteenth century onward, the postal meaning controls. The armor meaning is confined to military and heraldic contexts and will not appear in correspondence, notice, or fraud disputes. A secondary confusion arises between "mailed" and "delivered" or "received." Courts have consistently held that mailing — deposit with postal authorities — is not synonymous with delivery or receipt. Procedural rules that trigger deadlines upon mailing do not require proof that the recipient ever received the item.
Why It Matters in Research
The postal meaning of "mailed" is jurisdictionally and temporally unstable in ways that matter to researchers working across different periods and legal contexts.
Procedural timing rules: Many statutes and court rules deem service or filing complete upon mailing, not receipt. When researching whether a party met a deadline, establishing when an item was "mailed" — not when it arrived — is often dispositive. Historical cases frequently turned on this distinction, and the definition in Black's (both editions) tracks exactly this concern: custody by the postal officer is the operative moment.
Federal mail fraud: The question of whether something was "mailed" within the meaning of federal fraud statutes is a recurring factual and legal issue. The corpus contains substantial material on mail fraud (18 USC 1341) where the mailing requirement defines the outer boundary of federal jurisdiction. Even indirect or incidental use of the mails can satisfy the element — a nuance that goes well beyond the dictionary definition.
Historical postal infrastructure: Before the late nineteenth century, postal systems were less formalized. Researchers working with pre-Civil War materials should be cautious about assuming that "mailed" carried the same technical meaning it acquired once federal postal law matured. The Missouri case cited in Black's (Pier v. Heinrichshoffen) reflects late nineteenth-century doctrine, not earlier practice.
Notice doctrines: The mailbox rule — that acceptance of a contract or service of a document is effective upon mailing — builds on the legal definition of "mailed." Understanding what constitutes proper mailing is prerequisite to applying the rule correctly in historical contract and civil procedure research.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) are in direct agreement, both citing Pier v. Heinrichshoffen, 67 Mo. 163 (29 Am. Rep. 501), for the two-part definition: proper preparation and delivery to the custody of the postal officer. The 2nd edition supplies the complete citation. Both editions are tightly focused on the act of depositing mail with postal authority, which reflects the doctrinal need to fix a precise moment for legal purposes.
Bouvier's entry is fragmentary in the available source material — the surviving text breaks off mid-sentence ("As applied to a letter, it") and the surrounding Bouvier text is from an unrelated entry (a shipbuilding passage and a definition of "maiden"). Researchers should not treat Bouvier as a reliable source for this term without consulting a complete edition. The truncation suggests an indexing or digitization artifact in the corpus rather than a genuine absence of content in Bouvier.
No historical dictionary addresses the modern extensions of the concept — certified mail, electronic service analogs, or the mailbox rule — because these developed after the primary reference editions were compiled.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal procedural rules (Fed. R. Civ. P. 5) and state equivalents define "mailed" with varying specificity, particularly regarding whether electronic transmission can substitute. In federal criminal law, the mailing element of mail fraud (18 USC 1341) has been interpreted broadly by courts and is not limited to first-class letters. State notice statutes should be checked individually; some require return-receipt service to trigger the mailing presumption.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Wire Fraud and Mail Fraud (18 USC 1341, 1343) — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia