letterboxing

noun

let·​ter·​box·​ing ˈle-tər-ˌbäk-siŋ 

variants or less commonly letter-boxing or letter boxing

1

: the technique of formatting a recorded video so as to show the full frame within the screen area of a device (such as a television or phone) that has a different aspect ratio

As movie buffs know, letterboxing provides home viewers with a genuine theatrical experience. Never mind the black bars at the top and bottom of your screen, a widescreen video is the only way—outside of a trip to the multiplex—to see the whole movie, just the way the filmmakers intended.

—Amy Longsdorf

Letter-boxing permits the viewer to see the entire screen and digital sound enables the viewer to hear the original sound tracks in all of their glory.

—Joe Saltzman

also : the appearance of black areas above and below the frame resulting from this technique

Even if the tablet display is almost a perfect square that causes letterboxing with videos (black chunks of screen above and below the video), it's bigger than even the biggest traditional phone screen you can find …

—Antonio Villas-Boas

2

: a game in which players are given written directions or clues to find a container that is hidden usually in an outdoor location and that holds a rubber stamp and a notebook for recording the discovery

He was first drawn to the craft through a treasure hunt known as letterboxing, where you follow a set of clues to a hidden stamp somewhere out in the world. Once there, you take an impression of the stamp in your notebook and leave a personal, signature stamp of your own in a "visitor book" at the location to show you were there.

—Kayla Canne

Letterboxing had its start in England in 1854, when James Perrot left his calling card in a bottle on a moor in Dartmoor, Devon. He included a note requesting that finders also leave their calling cards in the bottle.

—Lisa Fieldman

… they've played a similar game called letter boxing by using coordinates found on the Internet …

—AnnMarie Cornejo

Examples of letterboxing in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The Great Gatsby demonstrated that local-dimming mini-LED arrays aren't created equal, as the anamorphic picture's letterboxing suffered significant light bloom, making the black bars lighten and darken noticeably depending on the scene. —Will Greenwald, PC Magazine, 6 Apr. 2026

It is said not to unfold in a square-ish form like the Galaxy Z Fold 6 to reduce letterboxing (thick borders when watching videos). —Prakhar Khanna, Forbes.com, 17 Apr. 2025

With that in mind, the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 2-in-1 Gen 4’s result doesn’t look so impressive, with the display at just 80 nits and the letterboxing around the video not illuminating its OLED pixels. —PCMAG, 27 Nov. 2024

Word History

Etymology

(sense 1) probably so called from the resemblance of the picture on the TV screen or the bands above and below the picture to slots in a mailbox

First Known Use

1977, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Rhymes for letterboxing

• boxing