Glossary
Mail Clerk Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential mail clerk terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key mail clerk vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in mail clerk training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Bulk mail
- Large mailings.
- Carrier pickup
- Outgoing mail collection.
- Certified mail
- Mail with proof of delivery.
- Chain of custody
- Tracking who handled items.
- Indicia
- Printed postage mark.
- Inserter
- Machine that stuffs envelopes.
- Intelligent Mail barcode
- USPS barcode.
- Interoffice mail
- Internal mail.
- Mail stop
- Internal delivery point.
- Manifest
- List of shipments.
- Postage meter
- Machine that prints postage.
- Presort
- Sorting for postage discounts.
- Return to sender
- Undeliverable mail.
- Suspicious package
- Possible threat.
- Tracking number
- Package ID.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Mail Clerk practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Mail Clerk training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.