A snail by any other name would be as slow

June 2, 2020 12:14 PM

Idiom filter: in your language or region, is there another term for snail mail? Would love to hear it!
posted by teststrip to Writing & Language (13 answers total)

Best answer: Pony Express (Texas)
posted by a humble nudibranch at 1:10 PM on June 2, 2020

Best answer: German has the word Schneckenpost (lit. "snail mail"), but it predates electronic mail by over a century. It was used to satirize the slow pace of mail sent by carriage in the 19th and early 20th centuries and is still used as a negative expression for physical mail that takes unusually long to arrive ("10 days for delivery! Was it sent by Schneckenpost?").

The loan words Snailmail or Snail-Mail can also be used to mean "physical mail of whatever speed, in contrast to email". Schneckenpost retains its original meaning, but it can also be used in the same way as "snail mail" is in English (i.e. as a contrast to email). I'm not a native speaker, so I can't say which word would be more commonly used in that sense or whether most speakers would understand that meaning.
posted by jedicus at 1:25 PM on June 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

Post (British English)? Or do you mean more colloquial terms?
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:34 PM on June 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: More colloquial terms, please!

I'm keen to go dwn some rabbit holes. For example, the pony express reminded me of the term 'wai-wai express', which is slang for walking in New Zealand. I believe wai-wai translates to legs in Māori but I need to double check!
posted by teststrip at 1:45 PM on June 2, 2020

Best answer: German has the word Schneckenpost (lit. "snail mail")

I sometimes use 'slakkenpost' in Dutch and people tend to understand it, but I'm not sure whether other people use it too. A quick search shows that at least someone does.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:19 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I sometimes call it postal mail or paper mail to distinguish it from e-mail. I'm not sure where I picked this up. (Eastern Ontario, transplant from California.)
posted by heatherlogan at 2:24 PM on June 2, 2020

It's called "mail" or "US Mail" in my language and region.
posted by JimN2TAW at 2:31 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Back in Ye Olden Dayes, on the east coast of Canada, conventional mail that took an unexpectedly long time to arrive was said to be "on a slow boat from China".
posted by angiep at 3:15 PM on June 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

My wife calls it 'the letterpost'. I'm not sure anyone else does, but I'm sharing it here in the hope it catches on. Seconding that more generally in the UK, people just call it 'the post', as in, 'it's in the post', 'has the post arrived yet?', or even 'has the post been?'
posted by Chairboy at 3:33 PM on June 2, 2020

Sometimes refer to Parcel Post as "coming by mule train".
posted by a humble nudibranch at 4:29 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I used to work in the international shipping department of a book publisher, and the two postal shipping options were "surface mail" and "air mail".
posted by zombiedance at 5:59 PM on June 2, 2020

Best answer: "Coming by dog sled" (Alaska, naturally!)
posted by summerstorm at 9:01 PM on June 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: In Swedish you can say snigelpost, which technically speaking means slug mail, not snail mail. In my family we sometimes said something being shipped overseas was on the slow boat, if it took a long time.
posted by bluebird at 12:42 AM on June 3, 2020 [1 favorite]