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Postal Service v. Konan · ¶79

At most, the majority shows that certain dictionary defi- nitions of “miscarriage” could conceivably capture intention- ally withholding mail, or tearing up a letter into pieces, or lighting a package on fire—in all those situations, the mail “failed to arrive properly.”Ante, at 399.“That a definition is broad enough to encompass one sense of a word,” however, “does not establish that the word is ordinarily understood in that sense.”Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd., 566 U. S. 560, 568 (2012).Here, neither the majority nor the Government has offered any meaningful evidence supporting the view that “miscarriage” was commonly used in situations when the mail failed to arrive properly due to intentional wrongdoing, and that, by including “miscarriage” within the postal exception, Congress intended to capture such wrongdoing.
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