Word.ws English Dictionary

snail's pace

snail's pace noun: a frustratingly slow rate of speed.

Noun

snail's pace

  1. (idiomatic, informal) A frustratingly slow rate of speed.
    • My grandmother drives her car at a snail's pace.
    • He describes the operation thus: "The heavy ram employed to impart the finishing strokes, hoisted up with double purchase and snail's pace to the summit of the Piling Engine, and then falling down like a thunderbolt on the head of the devoted timber, driving it perhaps a single half inch in to the...1952 July, W. R. Watson, “Sankey Viaduct and Embankment”, in Railway Magazine, page 487

Forms of snail's pace

alternative formsnail pace

Origin of snail's pace

Due to the fact that snails move very slowly.

Questions about snail's pace

What does snail's pace mean?
Snail's pace means a frustratingly slow rate of speed.
What part of speech is snail's pace?
Snail's pace is a noun.

Words near snail's pace in the dictionary

  1. snail syrup
  2. snail trail
  3. snail trefoil
  4. snail trefoils
  5. snail vine
  6. snail's pace
  7. snail-mail
  8. snail-paced
  9. snail-sense feminism
  10. snail-shell
  11. snail-shells

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snail's pace (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.

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