tailed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of tail.

   An unmarked van tailed the convoy for nearly fifty miles.

   She tailed the courier quietly, careful to stay a block behind.

   Note

   Regular in every respect: one -ed form serves after a subject (the van tailed us) and after have or be (we had been tailed for miles). In the surveillance meaning it takes a direct object. The builder's use wants in or into, as in a beam tailed into the wall. Of a ship at anchor, it describes the stern swinging in a direction. The same spelling is also the adjective meaning "having a tail".

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having a tail or a tail-like part.

   Tailed amphibians like newts and salamanders keep their tails throughout life.

   Some lizards are brightly tailed, with vivid markings near the rear.

   Oppositetailless

   Note

   Most at home inside compounds, where a first element says what kind of tail: a long-tailed mouse. Before a noun the compound is hyphenated. The word goes back to Middle English tayled, built from tail plus the -ed that turns a noun into "having one", the pattern of horned or winged. It does not take degrees: a creature is tailed or it is not.

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a butterfly, having one or more thread-like projections on the rear corner of each hind wing.

   Several tailed species in the family Lycaenidae use their hind-wing filaments to mislead predators.

   Among the tailed butterflies, the swallowtails show the most pronounced wing projections.

   Oppositetailless

   Note

   An entomologist's term, and an exact one. The filaments grow from the tornus, the inner rear angle of the hind wing, not from just anywhere along its edge. Swallowtails and hairstreaks are the familiar examples. Unlike the everyday "having a tail" sense, these tails are not a body part extending from the rear. They are slender outgrowths of the wing itself.

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