dead lettern.
1.
a. originally. A writing, etc. taken in a bare literal sense without reference to its ‘spirit’, and hence useless or ineffective (cf. Rom. vii. 6, 2 Cor. iii. 6).
ΘΚΠ
society > communication > writing > written text > [noun] > taken in literal sense, and hence ineffective
dead letter1579
1579 W. Fulke Heskins Parl. Repealed in D. Heskins Ouerthrowne 6 The scriptures, which this dogge calleth the deade letters.
1652 P. Sterry England's Deliverance 10 This..taken singly by it selfe, is but a breathlesse Carkasse, or a Dead Letter.
1834 T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus ii. iii. 41/2 First must the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead..if the living Spirit of Religion..is to arise on us.
b. A writ, statute, ordinance, etc., which is or has become practically without force or inoperative, though not formally repealed or abolished.
ΘΚΠ
society > law > [noun] > edict, decree, ordinance, or institute > that has become inoperative
dead letter1663
1663 J. Heath Flagellum (ed. 2) 6 To which all other dictates and Instructions were uselesse, and as a dead letter.
1726 N. Amhurst Terræ-filius (ed. 2) xlii. 220 The best laws, when they become dead letters, are no laws.
a1754 H. Fielding Jrnl. Voy. Lisbon (1755) 145 And to enact laws without doing this, is to fill our statute-books..still fuller with dead letter, of no use but to the printer of the acts of parliament.
1849 T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. II. 132 The few penal laws..which had been made in Ireland against Protestant Noncomformists, were a dead letter.
1869 E. A. Freeman Hist. Norman Conquest (1876) III. xii. 249 Many a treaty of marriage became a dead letter almost as soon as it was signed.
c. transferred and figurative. (See quots.)
ΘΚΠ
the world > action or operation > harm or detriment > disadvantage > uselessness > [noun] > that which is useless
unnuteOE
inutility1802
dead letter1864
good-for-nothing1873
1864 J. C. Hotten Slang Dict. (new ed.) 118 Dead-letter, an action of no value or weight; an article, owing to some mistake in its production, rendered utterly valueless.
1926 H. W. Fowler Dict. Mod. Eng. Usage 104/1 Dead letter..; the application of it [sc. the phrase] to what was never a regulation but has gone or is going out of use, as quill pens, horse-traction, amateur football, &c., or to a regulation that loses its force only by actual abolition (the one-sex franchise will soon be a d.l.), is a slipshod extension.
2. A letter which lies unclaimed for a certain time at a post-office, or which cannot be delivered through defect of address or other cause. Dead-letter Office: a department of a general post-office in which dead letters are examined, and returned to the writers, or destroyed after a certain time; c1880 officially styled Returned Letter Office.
ΘΚΠ
society > communication > correspondence > letter > mail > [noun] > unclaimed letter
dead letter1703
1703 in Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. (1838) 3rd Ser. VII. 62 The other penny is lost in dead letters (remaining in the several Post Offices).
1737 London Mag. Jan. 54/1 John Jesse, Esq; Deputy Secretary of the Post-Office, succeeds the late Mr Williamson as Deputy Cashier; as does Mr John Barber, as Inspector of dead letters at the said Office.
1771 P. Parsons Newmarket II. 126 I sent to the Posthouse, and purchased a pacquet of dead letters.
1812 M. Edgeworth Absentee xvii, in Tales Fashionable Life VI. 423 The letter went coursing after you..I took it for granted that it found it's way to the dead-letter office.
1845 J. R. McCulloch Treat. Taxation ii. viii. 307 With these exceptions, all packets above the weight of 16 oz. will be immediately forwarded to the Dead Letter Office.
1881 Standard 1 Nov. 2/2 The old name, ‘Dead Letter Office’, has had to be altered to the present appellation, ‘Returned Letter Office’, partly in consequence of the fatuity of the public, who would insist upon associating the title ‘Dead’ letter with the ‘land of the leal’.
Categories »
3. Typography. See dead adj. 20d.
Derivatives
dead-ˈletterism n. devotion to the ‘dead letter’ to the neglect of the ‘spirit’ (see 1a).Apparently an isolated use.
ΘΚΠ
the world > action or operation > carrying out > observance or carrying out a promise, law, etc. > [noun] > to the dead letter
dead-letterism1879
1879 S. Baring-Gould Germany II. 186 Pietism..is also a necessary revulsion from the dead-letterism into which German Protestantism had lapsed.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1894; most recently modified version published online September 2019).
<
n.1579