po
1 Americannoun
noun
abbreviation
abbreviation
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Post Office
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Personnel Officer
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petty officer
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Pilot Officer
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Also: p.o.. postal order
symbol
noun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of po1
1875–80; probably < French pot ( de chambre ) chamber pot
Origin of p.o.4
From Latin per ōs
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:
I personally like to lightly steam them and then deep fry them as a substitute for oysters in my po boys.
From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2021
"Ma po tofu has to be a favourite," says David Yeung, a smile evident in his voice.
From BBC ● Jun. 30, 2020
With a rustic-industrial aesthetic and wide windows overlooking the harbor, it’s a favorite for locally sourced seafood dishes like soft-shell crab BLTs and fried oyster po boys.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 15, 2019
Your welcome gift bag includes the herbal ointment Tiger Balm and Chinese po chai pills for indigestion.
From New York Times ● Feb. 9, 2019
People don’t know we just as po’ as po’.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
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Po and So waves travel through oceanic plates rather than moving only through the surrounding mantle.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 18, 2026
Both Po and So waves traveled significantly more slowly beneath the plateau.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 18, 2026
The Po River's flow has collapsed in a matter of days, dropping below 300 cubic meters per second, compared with an average of around 1,500 in June, according to Aipo, the interregional river agency.
From Barron's ● Jun. 27, 2026
After another hour of waiting and watching employees reboot ticket kiosks, Po snagged two decent seats.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Lee Chong listened while Li Po was read to him in English.
From "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck
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At first Eliot found Mrs. Sen’s anxiety incomprehensible; his mother had a p.o. box in town, and she collected mail so infrequently that once their electricity was cut off for three days.
From "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Many life insurance companies use PO boxes — and as I learned the hard way, you can only send mail to PO boxes via the United States Postal Service.
From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2026
PiS, led by 75-year-old Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Tusk's PO are the two parties that have dominated Polish politics for the last 20 years and some voters are fed up with the duopoly.
From BBC ● May 16, 2025
We don't talk about how much the revolving door of sending people back to jail is just based on who your PO was, who your lawyer was, who your judge was that day.
From Salon ● Jun. 8, 2023
PO and the Permanent Secretary's officials also had previously advised that participating online risked generating media interest.
From BBC ● May 24, 2023
The envelope was addressed to his PO box.
From "We Are Okay" by Nina LaCour
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Those with P.O. boxes have been redirected to a post office on North Vignes Street near Union Station, about two miles away.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2026
When Paxton, the state attorney general, filed the lawsuit in February suing Dallas, a P.O.
From Salon ● May 3, 2026
You can find, reserve and apply for a P.O. box online.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 16, 2025
But P.&I.D.’s legal address was a P.O. box on Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands.
From New York Times ● Feb. 9, 2024
My P.O. hasn’t realized yet that schools are just like the city and the city is just like prison.
From "The Freedom Writers Diary" by The Freedom Writers
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Two cardiologists, the Navy's Captain Ashton Graybiel and the Air Force's Dr. Lawrence E. Lamb, foresee pos sibly grave difficulties for both the circulatory and respiratory systems under long exposure to g-free conditions.
From Time Magazine Archive
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James Booth's Joyce lacks some of the incisive arrogance that the character ought to pos sess, while Tim Curry's Tzara is larkily iconoclastic without quite being a cultural arson ist.
From Time Magazine Archive
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That bloodstream, he pointed out, was our most precious pos session.
From Time Magazine Archive
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"The only impartiality pos sible to the human mind," said he once, "is that which arises from an understand ing of neither side of the case."
From Time Magazine Archive
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"I'll go by dem lak dey's hitched to a pos'!"
From The Man from Jericho by Litsey, Edwin Carlile
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.