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Definition of "letterbox" []

  • See mailbox. (noun)
  • A format for presenting movies on television that maintains the rectangular theater image on a television screen by reducing the overall image until the full width can be seen, resulting in blank space above and below the image. (noun)
  • To produce or present (film) in a letterbox format. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "letterbox" in a sentence
  • "Not like this man, when I'm drunk and they forgot to bring me the commercial mail, but when I'm tired and the mailman has indeed graced me with a load of advertisements while my letterbox is clearly marked with a large sticker that says:"
  • "To within a few millimetres, human brains share a reading hotspot - what Stanislas Dehaene calls the "letterbox" - on the bottom of the left hemisphere."
  • "His most recent leaflet through my letterbox was the most patronising I've ever received, incidentally."
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