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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

fantail.

Any of several birds, of the genus Rhipidura, from Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈfænˌteɪl/General-American
  1. Any of several birds, of the genus Rhipidura, from Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

  2. Any of several domestic varieties of pigeon having a fan-shaped tail.

  3. Any of several goldfish having a large fan-shaped tail.

  4. An overhanging deck at the stern of a ship.

  5. A small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill, used to turn the cap automatically to bring it into the wind.

  6. A brimmed hat with just the back of the brim turned up.

Where this word comes from

From fan + tail. The sense of Rhipidura-genus birds is a calque of translingual Rhipidura.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.