love letter

From Middle English lovelettre.

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love letter (plural love letters)

1. A letter written about the author's love for the intended reader.

   Synonym: billet-doux

   We never see each other, but have been sending love letters every Valentine's Day for 10 years.

   • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC:

     Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language […] ; his clerks, however, understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there. For his signature, however, that was different.

   • 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:

     Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.

2. (figurative) A work that shows great passion or enthusiasm for something.

   This movie is a love letter to New York.

   • 2021 July 12, Nicholas Barber, “The French Dispatch: Four stars for Wes Anderson's latest”, in BBC‎:

     The film is both a tip of the chapeau to The New Yorker, among other American magazines, and a love letter to expat life in France. But beyond that? There isn't much going on beneath its extraordinary bejewelled surface.

   • 2021 December 29, Conrad Landin, “Glasgow Subway: a city institution”, in RAIL, number 947, page 45:

     It was in this era, too, that author and Scotland the Brave songwriter Cliff Hanley penned The Glasgow Underground, a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the Subway in song.

3. (US, slang) A notice from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection informing about the seizure of a personal shipment as contraband.
   • 2016 August 2, Nick Jarvis, “What Happens if You're Caught Getting Drugs in the Mail?”, in Vice‎:

     Dr Martin says the address the package has been sent to will likely get a "love letter" in the post from Customs.