Template:Notice delivery capsule

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The Cambridge Dictionary says that to “deliver” is “to take goods, letters, parcels, etc. to people’s houses or places of work”.[1]

Merriam Webster says it means “to take and hand over to or leave for another”.[2]

The Collins Dictionary of British English, in a rather modishly modern English format, tells us “If you deliver something somewhere, you take it there”.[3]

A bit more challengingly, the Lexico Oxford Dictionary says it means “bring and hand over (a letter, parcel, or goods) to the proper recipient or address”. Oxford’s language suggests a “handing” from sender to recipient, though a commonsense application of delivery through a letterbox to an address says the only “hands” involved are the sender’s.

An agent for the recipient does not need to be there; just that the notice is conveyed to the appointed place. It is no good refusing to answer the door, hiding behind the sofa or blocking up your letterbox with Araldite: if the sender’s agent brings a notice to your designated address, even by regular post, the sender has “delivered” it.

If it is, literally, impossible to arrange even an agent to hand-deliver a package, what then? Before the spring of 2020, most learned commentators would have regarded such a scenario as so absurd as to not dignify an answer. By April, ISDA was seeking advice about it.