letters

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of letter.

   The store's sign was missing several letters after the storm.

   He kept all her old letters in a wooden box.

   Note

   One plural covers two quite different things: the characters of an alphabet and the messages sent by post. Context does the sorting, as with missing letters on a sign versus a box of old letters. The paper size is different, because letter paper is uncountable and a stack of it is not "letters." When the plural means literature rather than mail, it has become letters as a school subject.

2. 2
   noun

   The liberal arts and humanities; the broad cultural knowledge gained through study and reading.

   He devoted his life to letters, reading widely in history and philosophy.

   The academy was founded to promote letters across the young nation.

   Similarlearning, scholarship, humanities, culture

   Note

   The older, wider sense is best known from "man of letters," someone of broad learning whatever his field. Vitruvius qualified even though architecture stood outside the liberal arts. It also takes a period adjective, as in John Buchan's The Far Islands (1899), where a father has "a taste for modern letters." That phrase means the new books of the day, not a course of study.

3. 3
   noun

   Literature studied as an academic subject; the formal study of written creative works.

   He earned his degree in letters before becoming an editor.

   The faculty of letters offered courses in poetry, drama, and the novel.

   Similarliterature

   Note

   Here the word names a field with a department and a diploma. It usually travels with a qualifier or a partner discipline: English letters, letters and philology, a faculty of letters. Look for that company to tell it apart from the broader sense of learning. That sense describes a cultivated mind, while this one marks a place on the curriculum where a degree can be earned.

4. 4
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of letter.

   The artist letters every poster herself before the show opens.

   A craftsman letters the gravestones in careful Roman capitals.

   Note

   The spelling is shared with the plural noun, so the sentence around it decides which is meant: she letters the signs, but the letters arrived. Two verbs stand behind this form. The craft verb is transitive and needs an object, as when a craftsman letters gravestones. The American sports verb stands alone: a student who letters has earned a varsity letter.

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