snail mail

snail mail
—n
1.	the conventional postal system, as opposed to electronic mail
—vb
2.	(tr) to send by the conventional postal system, rather than by electronic mail
[C20: so named because of the relative slowness of the conventional postal system]

snail mail definition

A term used to denote mail sent via the traditional postal service, usually to contrast that process to e-mail.

snail-mail definition n. post office mail; regular mail as opposed to electronic mail. (Refers to the slowness of regular mail in comparison to electronic mail or faxes.) : There are lots of color pictures in the article, so I will send you the original by snail-mail.

snail mail definition

messaging
(Or "snailmail", "smail" from "US Mail" via "USnail"; "paper mail"). Bits of dead tree sent via the postal service as opposed to electronic mail. One's postal address is, correspondingly, a "snail (mail) address". There have even been parody USnail posters and stamps made.
The variant "paper-net" is a hackish way of referring to the postal service, comparing it to a very slow, low-reliability network. Sig blocks sometimes include a "Paper-Net:" header just before the sender's postal address; common variants of this are "Papernet" and "P-Net". Note that the standard netiquette guidelines discourage this practice as a waste of bandwidth, since netters are quite unlikely to casually use postal addresses and if they really wanted your snail mail address they could always ask for it by e-mail.
Compare voice-net, sneakernet, P-mail.
(1995-01-31)

snail mail

Ordinary postal service, as opposed to electronic communications. For example, He hasn't taken to his computer so he's still using snail mail. This slangy idiom, alluding to the alleged slowness of the snail, caught on at least partly for its rhyme. [1980s]