tailing

Pluraltailings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of following someone, especially to keep watch on their movements.

   The tailing of the suspect continued for nearly a week before any arrest.

   A botched tailing alerted the smugglers and ruined the whole operation.

   Similarsurveillance, shadowing

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of tail.

   The reporters were tailing the senator, hoping for an unguarded quote.

   A drone kept tailing the convoy across the open desert.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every verb sense of tail, not only the detective's one. Builders speak of a timber tailing in or into a wall when its end rests on the support, and a ship at anchor is tailing when its stern swings in a given direction. In the shadowing sense it is transitive and needs an object. As a gerund it shades into the noun for following someone.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The portion of a projecting brick or stone that is embedded in a wall to hold it firm.

   The architect specified a longer tailing to keep the heavy cornice from overturning.

   Insufficient tailing on each block caused the projecting course to sag over time.

   Note

   A builder's word for the hidden half of a projection: the buried end of a corbel or cornice stone counterweights the part that juts out, so a longer tailing lets the projection carry more. The tailing need not be the stone itself. Benjamin Dean Wyatt, writing in 1813, describes an iron bar forming a tailing for stones in doorways. Keep it apart from the threshing-floor chaff, which shares the spelling.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   A prolongation of current in a telegraph line, caused by capacity in the line, that makes successive signals run together.

   Engineers reduced the tailing by shortening the cable run between relays.

   On the long undersea cable, severe tailing slowed transmission dramatically.

   Note

   An engineer's word from the telegraph era. A long conductor stores charge, so current keeps flowing after the key opens, and each signal trails into the next. The fault lies in the line itself, not in the operator. The longer the line, the worse the smearing, and the slower messages must be sent to keep the signals distinct.

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