Word.ws English Dictionary

read the mail

read the mail verb: to listen to CB radio conversations without taking part.

Verb

read the mail (third-person singular simple present reads the mail, present participle reading the mail, simple past and past participle read the mail)

  1. (CB radio slang) To listen to CB radio conversations without taking part.
    • You can “read the mail" with the U.S., you may violate local laws to transmit on amateur frequencies without a license […]1983, Cruising World, volume 9, number 7, page 41
    • And that's when the fun begins. You can read the mail, download the bulletins, keep up-to-date on OSCAR-13 operations, decode the numerical data and learn about the space environment, […]1989, 73 Amateur Radio, numbers 340-351, page 20
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see read, mail.

Forms of read the mail

third-person singular presentreads the mail
present participlereading the mail
past participleread the mail
pastread the mail

Questions about read the mail

What does read the mail mean?
Read the mail means to listen to CB radio conversations without taking part.
What part of speech is read the mail?
Read the mail is a verb.
What is the past tense of read the mail?
The past tense of read the mail is read the mail.

Words near read the mail in the dictionary

  1. read someone's beads
  2. read someone's lips
  3. read someone's mind
  4. read the car
  5. read the green
  6. read the mail
  7. read the riot act
  8. read the room
  9. read the table
  10. read through
  11. read up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: read the mail (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.

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