Snail mail

Snail mail or smail (from snail + mail) is a dysphemistic retronym—named after the snail with its slow speed—used to refer to letters and missives 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, land mail, or simply mail or post. An earlier term of the same type is surface mail, coined retrospectively after the development of airmail.^[1]

Snail mail is also a term used in reference to penpalling. Snail mail penpals are those penpals that communicate with one another through the postal system, rather than on the internet which is becoming the more common medium.

Some online groups also use paper mail through regular gift or craft hot topics. In some countries, services are available to print and deliver emails to those unable to receive email, like people with no computers or internet access.

Similar terminology was used in the 1840s to contrast the already-operating postal mail with the new telegraph. The Philadelphia North American stated: "The markets will no longer be dependent upon snail paced mails".^[2]

Use of the term "snail mail" pre-dates the 1970 reference below. It was actually used by the U.S. Post Office in magazine advertising in the mid to late 1960s to encourage use of zip codes. Ads for zip code use appeared in many issues of "LOOK", "Life", and, "Saturday Evening Post" magazines and displayed a caricature of a large snail outfitted as a letter carrier, with the term "Snail Mail" in bold lettering.

An early use of the exact term is attributed to the author Arnold Lobel in his story titled "The Letter" in the 1970 book Frog and Toad are Friends, in which Frog gave a letter to Snail to be delivered to Toad which took Snail four days to deliver. Similarly, in the 1981 animated feature Strawberry Shortcake in Big Apple City, the phrase was used as a rhyming joke to describe mail being delivered by an actual snail; Strawberry receives her letter three weeks late because, as the snail character admits: "Snail mail, she is slow".

In the sense of contrasting it with electronic mail, however, Jim Rutt is purported to have first used this phrase in January 1981.^[3][4] Mr. Rutt later went on to become CEO of Network Solutions.

See also

• E-mail letter
• Airmail
• Pony express
• Sneaker net

References

1. ^ Cognitive English grammar, by Günter Radden, René Dirven, p. 4
2. ^ Howe, Daniel Walker, "What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848", Oxford University Press, 2007.
3. ^ http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199906/msg00046.html
4. ^ http://www.lifeboat.com/ex/bios.jim.rutt

External links

• A documented appearance of the term "snailpapers" on USENET dated 1982, on Google Groups