Word.ws English Dictionary

letterhack

letterhack noun: a fan who is a prolific writer of letters to periodicals.

Noun

letterhack (plural letterhacks)

  1. (dated, slang) A fan who is a prolific writer of letters to periodicals.
    • Nowadays a letter-hack says things simply, which is, after all, the best way. Take any good story. You don't find long, stilted sentences with long-winded descriptions (which was one reason I put ‘The Dimension of Chance’ last). So listen and learn, letter-hacks.1946 Fall, Tom Jewett, Startling Stories, volume 14, number 2, page 102
    • LETTERHACK - An actifan who specializes in writing letters for zines. One of the simplest and yet the most effective phases of fanac. Give the letterhack a ream of paper, stamps, and one or two other letterhacks for him to argue with, and he will keep happy and tractable for months.1958, Ralph Merridette Holland, Ghu's Lexicon, page 12
    Synonyms:
    epistolarian, loccer

Verb

letterhack (third-person singular simple present letterhacks, present participle letterhacking, simple past and past participle letterhacked)

  1. (dated, slang) To write letters to periodicals very frequently.
    • It was in those letter columns that I was first exposed to the concept of fandom. Letterhacking was in high bloom in 1951; the letter columns were filled with chatty letters from all sorts of people, the names of whom I soon came to recognize.1976 November, Ted White, “Twenty Five Years? That's--”, in Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, number 6, page 23

Synonyms of letterhack

Forms of letterhack

Noun
pluralletterhacks
Verb
third-person singular presentletterhacks
present participleletterhacking
past participleletterhacked
pastletterhacked

Origin of letterhack

From letter + hack.

Questions about letterhack

What does letterhack mean?
Letterhack means a fan who is a prolific writer of letters to periodicals.
What part of speech is letterhack?
Letterhack can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of letterhack?
The plural of letterhack is letterhacks.

Words near letterhack in the dictionary

  1. letterforms
  2. letterfounder
  3. letterfounders
  4. lettergram
  5. lettergrams
  6. letterhack
  7. letterhacked
  8. letterhacking
  9. letterhacks
  10. letterhead
  11. letterheaded

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: letterhack (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “letterhack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/letterhack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.