mail [ME] Modern English has two different words spelled mail. The mail that refers to the postal system came immediately from French, but is related to Dutch maal meaning ‘wallet, bag’. This is also the oldest sense in English, and mails in the USA and Scotland is still a term for baggage. The use of a postal service arose in the mid 17th century from the bag in which letters were carried. From there it developed to the contents of the bag. ‘An item delivered’ is the origin of newspaper titles such as the Daily Mail. At the same time mail also came to apply to a person or vehicle delivering letters and packages, and then to the postal system itself. British usage favours *post for both the system and the material delivered, while mail is dominant in North America and Australia. For electronic messages, though, mail and email [1970] are universal—the ordinary post is snail mail [1980].

In coat of mail [ME] the word came from Latin macula ‘stain, blemish, mesh of a net’, seen also in *immaculate. Originally it referred to the individual metal rings or plates that make up the armour, so a knight would have worn a coat of mails. See also blackmail.