tail
Pluraltails
Pluraltails
- 1The part at the rear of an animal's body that extends beyond the trunk, such as a flexible extension of the spine in mammals or the rear feathers of a bird.
The lizard dropped its tail to escape the predator's grip.
Beavers slap their tails on the water to warn the colony of danger.
- 2The back, last, or lower part of something, such as the rear of a boat, the end of a line of people, or the final stage of an event or period.
We arrived late and saw only the tail of the long parade.
The struggling teams languished at the tail of the league table.
UsageOften in the tail end of something, or at the tail of a line, list or table.
- 3
- 4An object or part of an object shaped like a tail, such as one of the strands of a cat-o'-nine-tails.
A long cloth tail trailed from the back of the dragon costume.
The old whip had nine leather tails tied to a short wooden handle.
Note
Shape alone earns the name: anything long, loose and trailing can be called a tail. Gideon Harvey's Morbus Anglicus (1666) passes on another writer's praise for the distilled waters of "those tails that hang on Willow Trees." The cat-o'-nine-tails carries the idea in its own name, because each of its nine thongs is one tail.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Gideon Harvey wrote Morbus Anglicus, first published in 1666; 1672 is the second-edition date. en.wikisource.org
- Harvey reports another writer's praise of distilled waters, using the quoted wording about willow tails. en.wiktionary.org
- A cat-o'-nine-tails has nine thongs, described as tails. en.wikipedia.org
- 5The reverse side of a coin, opposite the head and usually showing its monetary value.
Grandpa always picks tails when we flip a coin to decide who goes first.
The coin spun on the table for a moment before falling tails up.
UsageIn a coin toss you call heads or tails, and the coin comes up tails or lands on tails.
Similarreverse
Note
The call names the face without the head, which normally carries the coin's value. Collectors and formal writing use the reverse for the same side.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Tails names the side without the head, normally showing the coin's monetary value. en.wiktionary.org
- The technical name for the tails side is the reverse. usmint.gov
- 6To follow someone or something closely, especially secretly in order to watch where they go and what they do.
She agreed to tail the suspect until he led them to the hidden cache.
The private investigator tailed the wandering husband for a month.
UsageYou tail someone directly, with no word like after or behind in between.
Note
The bare imperative "Tail that car!" is the stock line of a chase. It is used for investigators and police, and also for anyone keeping quietly on another person's trail.
- 7The part of a statistical distribution farthest from its peak, where values become increasingly rare.
Analysts focused on the tail of the distribution, where the largest losses occur.
A distribution with heavy tails produces far more outliers than a normal one.
UsageCommon phrases include the tail of a distribution, long tails, heavy tails and thin tails.
Note
Statisticians often picture a distribution as a curve that rises to a single hump at the mode, its most common value. The tails are the thinning stretches farthest from that hump, where values grow increasingly rare.
Less common meanings
- 8A person who secretly follows and observes another.
The agent spotted a tail two cars behind on the highway.
He shook off the tail before reaching the safe house.
UsageAgents spot, pick up or shake off a tail, and police put a tail on someone.
Similarshadow
- 9A luminous stream of dust or ionized gas extending from a comet, pushed away from the Sun by sunlight's radiation pressure or the solar wind.
Astronomers photographed the comet's tail as it swung close to the Sun.
Some comets develop two distinct tails, one of dust and one of ionized gas.
Note
Here the tail is not part of a solid body but material the comet is losing: dust and gas pushed off it by sunlight and the solar wind. The likeness to an animal's tail is only in the shape. What looks like an appendage is really something being shed, and the Sun decides which way it streams.
- 10An informal word for the buttocks or rear of a person.
She worked her tail off to finish the report before the deadline.
He fell right on his tail when the old chair gave way.
UsageMost common in set phrases such as work your tail off (work very hard).
Similarbutt, backside, behind, rear, bottom
Note
Once ordinary English, and now colloquial and chiefly American. John Skelton's The Bowge of Courte (printed about 1499) has a woman who "hath gote me more money with her tayle." John Florio's 1603 translation of Montaigne uses tailes to render French cul.
- 11Usually in the plural tails: a man's formal coat cut away at the front with two long tapering flaps at the back, or formal evening dress that includes one.
For opening night, the conductor appeared in tails and a white bow tie.
The conductor still favors tails for evening concerts.
UsageUsually tails for this coat, as in white tie and tails; tailcoat is clearer for a single garment.
Similartailcoat
- 12A slang term for sexual intercourse.
The young men spent their whole leave chasing tail in the port bars.
He claimed he hadn't gotten any tail since the divorce.
UsageCommon in chase tail and get some tail; it takes some or a little rather than a.
Similarsex, intercourse, copulation, coitus
Note
J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) has a man ask the narrator, "Innarested in a little tail t'night?" The word is coarse and treats sex as something to be gotten.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- J. D. Salinger wrote The Catcher in the Rye. en.wikipedia.org
- The Catcher in the Rye was first published in 1951. core-docs.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
- A man, the elevator operator, asks the narrator the quoted question in chapter 13. core-docs.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
- 13The lower loop or stroke that descends below the baseline on letters such as g, q, and y.
The designer lengthened the tail of the q to give the typeface more character.
On this font, the tails of g and y barely dip below the baseline.
Similardescender
Note
Type designers often prefer descender, the general term for any stroke that drops below the baseline. Tail is the more pictorial word, and it suits the loop of g or the stroke of q and y especially well. Either can be used in describing a typeface, but descender covers every such stroke, while tail tends to be kept for ones that curve or flourish.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- A descender is a part of a letter that extends below the baseline. monotype.com
- The descending portions of g, q, and y can be called tails. openlab.citytech.cuny.edu
- 14The lower-order batters in a cricket side, usually the specialist bowlers who bat last.
England's tail wagged unexpectedly, adding eighty runs for the last three wickets.
A fragile tail meant the bowlers had little margin for error.
Note
Cricket maps the batting order onto a body. The specialist batters come first, and the specialist bowlers who bat last make up the tail. When those weaker batters score far more runs than expected, the stock phrase is that the tail wagged. The image is a lively dog, and the phrase carries a note of surprise.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Specialist batters usually bat near the top of the order, but the opening batters are not necessarily the best batters. en.wikipedia.org
- Specialist bowlers typically occupy the lower batting order. en.wikipedia.org
- 15All the terms of a sequence from some chosen term onward.
Convergence depends only on the tail of the sequence, not its opening terms.
He showed that the tail of the series shrinks faster than any geometric rate.
Note
In analysis a sequence has many tails, one beginning at each term, so definitions quantify over them: every tail, some tail. A sequence is called frequently 0 if every tail contains 0. Properties like convergence depend only on tails, which is why any finite number of opening terms can be changed without consequence.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- A sequence has a tail beginning at each term. sites.ualberta.ca
- Definitions quantify over tails; being frequently 0 means that every tail contains 0. staffwww.dcs.shef.ac.uk
- Changing finitely many initial terms does not affect convergence. math.uwaterloo.ca
- 16The straight stroke running up or down from the head of a written musical note; the stem.
The copyist drew the tail of each note going up from the right side of its head.
When notes sit above the middle line, their tails usually point downward.
Similarstem
Note
Musicians more commonly say stem. Tail is the pictorial name, and it matches the head the stroke grows from, so that a written note has a head and a tail. The stroke's direction follows the note's place on the staff: notes above the middle line usually have tails pointing down.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The stroke called a tail or stem extends from the notehead. en.wiktionary.org
- Stem direction generally depends on staff position, with notes above the middle line having downward stems. musictheory.tech
- 17The bottom or lower portion of a building component such as a roof slate or tile.
Rain runs off the tail of each slate and onto the slates below.
Cracks along the tails of the tiles let water seep into the battens.
Oppositehead
Note
Roofers speak of a slate's head and tail. The head is covered by the course above. The tail is the lower part left exposed to the weather. The size of the exposed tail helps decide how well the roof sheds rain, and cracks along it are where water gets in.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Slates may be centre-nailed or head-nailed; head nailing is not a general rule. The head is covered by overlapping courses. cupapizarras.com
- The tail is the lower exposed portion of the slate. longfordcoco.ie
- Exposure is one factor; roof slope and adequate headlap and offset also govern water shedding and resistance to penetration. slateassociation.org
- Cracks in the exposed slate can allow water penetration. nps.gov
- 18To pull or drag something along by its tail.
Ranchers sometimes tail a downed steer to help it regain its feet.
Wading into the river, she tailed the tired fish and lifted it onto the bank.
Note
Literal and rough: to grab an animal or a person by the tail and haul. Samuel Butler's Hudibras uses it in the middle of a brawl: "First Trulla stav'd, and Cerdon tail'd."
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Samuel Butler wrote Hudibras. en.wikisource.org
- The quoted line occurs in Hudibras, Part I, Canto III, during a fight involving dogs and a bear; it is narration. en.wikisource.org
- 19A slang term for the penis of a person or animal.
- 20The waste material left over after valuable ore has been separated out; a tailing.
- 21A short length of twisted electrical wire used to make a connection; a pigtail.
- 22A body of attendants or followers accompanying a person of rank; a retinue.
- 23The tendon at the distal end of a muscle, the end farthest from the body's center.
- 24The final fraction collected during a distillation run, usually carrying impurities and fusel oils.
- 25A rope spliced to the strap of a block, used to lash the block to anything.
- 26A thin, threadlike extension at the inner rear corner of the hind wing in some butterflies, such as hairstreaks.
- 27A feathery or downy plume on certain achenes, formed from the style, which stays on and grows longer after flowering.
- 28A shallow stretch at the start or end of a cut that does not pass through the full depth of the skin and hurts more than a clean incision.
- 29A strip formed when a bandage's end is cut lengthwise into two or more pieces.
- 30Of a beam or timber, to have one end resting on and held by a wall or similar support, used with in or into.
- 31Of an anchored ship, to swing so that its stern points in a particular direction.
- 32Cut down or restricted in extent, especially of an estate.
- 33A restriction on an inherited estate so that it can pass only to particular heirs.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English tail, from Old English tæġl ("tail"), from Proto-Germanic *taglą ("hair, fiber; hair of a tail") and possibly ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "hair of the tail," itself from one meaning "to tear or shred." It is related to Dutch teil, German Zagel, Swedish tagel, and Gothic tagl ("hair").
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 8 facts
- English tail descends from Middle English tail and Old English tæġl, meaning tail. en.wiktionary.org
- Old English tæġl descends from Proto-Germanic *taglą, through Proto-West Germanic *tagl. en.wiktionary.org
- Proto-Germanic *taglą is glossed as hair, fiber, and hair of a tail. en.wiktionary.org
- The proposed derivation distinguishes *doḱ- (“hair of the tail”) from its source *deḱ- (“to tear, shred, fray”). This is a theory; an alternative derivation is also reported. en.wiktionary.org
- Dutch teil, in its regional sense tail, is cognate with English tail. degruyterbrill.com
- German Zagel is cognate with English tail. en.wiktionary.org
- Swedish tagel is cognate with English tail. en.wiktionary.org
- Gothic tagl means hair and shares the Proto-Germanic ancestor. en.wiktionary.org