snail mail

regular mail, normal postal service (not electronic mail)

Snail mail is a derogatory retronym — named after the snail with its proverbially slow speed — used to refer to letters and carried by conventional postal delivery services. The phrase refers to the lag-time between dispatch of a letter and its receipt, versus the virtually instantaneous dispatch and delivery of its electronic equivalent, e-mail. It is also known, more neutrally, as paper mail, postal mail, or land mail.
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Noun
1. any mail that is physically delivered by the postal service; "email is much faster than snail mail"
(antonym) electronic mail, e-mail, email
(hypernym) mail, mail service, postal service, post

<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)

term (slightly pejorative) for conventional mail when compared with e-mail or voice-mail.