tail.
The caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to their posterior and near the anus or cloaca.
Meaning & usage
The caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to their posterior and near the anus or cloaca.
Most primates have a tail and fangs.
An object or part of an object resembling a tail in shape, such as the thongs on a cat-o'-nine-tails; a strand of material hanging from something.
The back, last, lower, or inferior part of anything.
The feathers attached to the pygostyle of a bird.
The tail-end of any object.
The rear structure of an aircraft, the empennage.
The visible stream of dust and gases blown from a comet by the solar wind.
The latter part of a time period or event, or (collectively) persons or objects represented in this part.
The part of a distribution most distant from the mode.
long tail
One who surreptitiously follows another.
The lower order of batsmen in the batting order, usually specialist bowlers.
The lower loop of the letters in the Roman alphabet, as in g, q or y.
The side of a coin not bearing the head; normally the side on which the monetary value of the coin is indicated; the reverse.
All the last terms of a sequence, from some term on.
A sequence (a#95;n) is said to be frequently 0 if every tail of the sequence contains 0.
The buttocks or backside.
The penis of a person or animal.
Sexual intercourse.
I'm gonna get me some tail tonight.
The stern; the back of the kayak.
A train or company of attendants; a retinue.
The distal tendon of a muscle.
A filamentous projection on the tornal section of each hind wing of certain butterflies.
A downy or feathery appendage of certain achens, formed of the permanent elongated style.
A portion of an incision, at its beginning or end, which does not go through the whole thickness of the skin, and is more painful than a complete incision; called also tailing.
One of the strips at the end of a bandage formed by splitting the bandage one or more times.
A rope spliced to the strap of a block, by which it may be lashed to anything.
The part of a note which runs perpendicularly upward or downward from the head; the stem.
A tailing.
The bottom or lower portion of a member or part such as a slate or tile.
A tailcoat.
Synonym of pigtail (“a short length of twisted electrical wire”).
The final fraction of a distillation run, typically containing impurities and fusel oils.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *taglą Proto-West Germanic *tagl Old English tæġl Middle English tayl English tail From Middle English tail, taile, taille, tayil, tayl, tayle, tayll, teil, tæȝel, from Old English tæġel, tæġl (“tail”), from Proto-West Germanic *tagl, from Proto-Germanic *taglą (“hair, fiber; hair of a tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *doḱ- (“hair of the tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- (“to tear, fray, shred”). Cognates Cognate with German Zagel (“tail”), Danish, Faroese, and Icelandic tagl (“tail”), Swedish tagel (“horsehair”), Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻 (tagl, “hair”); also Serbo-Croatian дла̏ка, dlȁka (“single hair”), Slovene dlaka (“single hair”), Northern Kurdish dezî (“cotton, thread”), Sanskrit दशा (daśā, “border, fringe, hem”). In some senses, apparently by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.
To hold by the end; said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support; with in or into
To swing with the stern in a certain direction; said of a vessel at anchor.
This vessel tails downstream.
To follow or hang to, like a tail; to be attached closely to, as that which can not be evaded.
To follow and observe surreptitiously.
Tail that car!
To pull or draw by the tail.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *taglą Proto-West Germanic *tagl Old English tæġl Middle English tayl English tail From Middle English tail, taile, taille, tayil, tayl, tayle, tayll, teil, tæȝel, from Old English tæġel, tæġl (“tail”), from Proto-West Germanic *tagl, from Proto-Germanic *taglą (“hair, fiber; hair of a tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *doḱ- (“hair of the tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- (“to tear, fray, shred”). Cognates Cognate with German Zagel (“tail”), Danish, Faroese, and Icelandic tagl (“tail”), Swedish tagel (“horsehair”), Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻 (tagl, “hair”); also Serbo-Croatian дла̏ка, dlȁka (“single hair”), Slovene dlaka (“single hair”), Northern Kurdish dezî (“cotton, thread”), Sanskrit दशा (daśā, “border, fringe, hem”). In some senses, apparently by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.
Limited; abridged; reduced; curtailed.
Where this word comes from
From Anglo-Norman, probably from a shortened form of entail.
Limitation of inheritance to certain heirs.
tail male
in tail
Where this word comes from
From Anglo-Norman, probably from a shortened form of entail.
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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.