mail it in
mail it in verb: to deliver a performance without commitment or effort, with lackluster results.
Verb
mail it in (third-person singular simple present mails it in, present participle mailing it in, simple past and past participle mailed it in)
- To deliver a performance without commitment or effort, with lackluster results.
- "I do think the judges mailed it in during Season 6, relative to previous years," Welton says. "Simon needs to be nastier. […]"2008 January 11, Bill Keveney, “Idol tries to get its groove back”, in USA Today, page 1A
- So when you have to write two columns a week that are going to be read by a lot of people around the world, you can't just mail it in. You're thinking all the time.2009 January/February, Keith Bellows, “Go, But Go Green”, in National Geographic, volume 26, number 1, page 22
- Synonyms:
- phone it in
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see mail, it, in.
Synonyms of mail it in
- phone it in
Forms of mail it in
| third-person singular present | mails it in |
|---|---|
| present participle | mailing it in |
| past participle | mailed it in |
| past | mailed it in |
Questions about mail it in
- What does mail it in mean?
- Mail it in means to deliver a performance without commitment or effort, with lackluster results.
- What part of speech is mail it in?
- Mail it in is a verb.
- What is the past tense of mail it in?
- The past tense of mail it in is mailed it in.
Words near mail it in in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mail it in (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “mail it in.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mail_it_in. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.