snail-mail

snail mail

Paper mail sent through the postal service (as opposed to email). Snails are thought of as very slow. A: "Did we get any exciting snail mail today?" B: "Nah, just some bills." Wait, you sent the invitations by snail mail? Why didn't you just do e-vites?
See also: mail, snail
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

snail-mail

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.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • snail mail
  • by return mail and by return post
  • mail
  • post
  • post (something) to (one)
  • post to
  • posting
  • by return mail
  • mail from some place
  • special delivery
References in periodicals archive
With snail-mail, we are used to prioritising action on items which took at least a day to reach us.
* Snail-mail from Wilma Mathews brought me this bit of ragged writing she'd read in her Arizona Republic late last year -- the story dealt with a so-called alt-fuels tax credit program.
After receiving and devouring the magazine as usual, I got to thinking about what I read on page 12 -- "Everyday decisions take precedence over computers." This made me regret not including my snail-mail address.
Still the e-mail and snail-mail bomblettes keep coming.
This Directory lists all the library catalogs accessible via JANET (Joint Academic Network), including e-mail, snail-mail contacts, and, perhaps more importantly, the limitations of the online catalog's coverage, as not all libraries have carried out retrospective machine-readable cataloging of their stock, or do not include the serials collection.
Send them to me here at Handgunner via snail-mail or by e-mail to: ed@americanhandgunner.com.