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Synonyms

addressee

American  
[ad-re-see, uh-dre-see] / ˌæd rɛˈsi, ə drɛˈsi /

noun

  • addressees
    plural
  1. the person, company, or the like to whom a piece of mail is addressed.


addressee British  
/ ˌædrɛˈsiː /

noun

  1. a person or organization to whom a letter, parcel, etc, is addressed

  2. a person who is addressed in conversation, a speech, a poem, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms


Etymology

Origin of addressee

An Americanism dating back to 1670–80; address + -ee


Explanation

The person who receives a letter in the mail is an addressee. If you're mailing a birthday gift, be sure to write the addressee's name and address clearly on the package! Whenever you send something to a particular address, you indicate an addressee. If you send your best friend a postcard from Hawaii, you'll include her name, street number, city, state and zip code, making her the addressee. Adding -ee to the end of a word is one way to indicate the recipient of an action; along with addressee, words like appointee and employee also use this suffix.

Keep Reading on Vocabulary.com

Vocabulary lists containing addressee

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

West Mercia Police sent speeding tickets to a Grade II listed Herefordshire castle bought by Hammond in 2012 and a £1m farm estate near Hereford, but the letters were returned marked as "addressee gone away".

From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026

In such a case, the apparent addressee is not the real addressee: the teacher is trying to pass on information indirectly to one or more other students.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 19, 2023

“Needless to say the addressee was quite startled when they opened the box,” Port Chester police wrote on Facebook.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 31, 2022

“Here we go,” he said before slicing into an envelope with a return address on Queens Boulevard in New York, marked “Personal and confidential — to be opened by addressee only.”

From New York Times ● Apr. 27, 2022

The Korean language has no fewer than six different levels of conversational address, depending on the relationship between the addressee and the addresser: formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate, and plain.

From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell

Steps include blocking specific stations and IP addressees that consistently transmit false data.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 2, 2022

Lara Jean’s secret stash of unsent love letters to Josh and four other crushes winds up being mysteriously stamped and sent to the addressees.

From New York Times ● Aug. 30, 2018

They come from a tradition of “vinegar valentines,” which, as I wrote on the Vault in 2013, delivered a payload of burn to their unfortunate addressees.

From Slate ● Feb. 14, 2018

In some cases, the emails were part of long chains, on which Mrs. Clinton was copied at the beginning, but later left off the list of addressees.

From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2016

Fortunately, upon inquiry being made by the interested parties, the medicine and slipper were delivered to the rightful addressees.

From The King's Post Being a volume of historical facts relating to the posts, mail coaches, coach roads, and railway mail services of and connected with the ancient city of Bristol from 1580 to the present time by Robert Charles Tombs

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