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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

tailgate.

A hinged board or hatch at the rear of a vehicle that can be lowered for loading and unloading.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈteɪlˌɡeɪt/UK, US
  1. A hinged board or hatch at the rear of a vehicle that can be lowered for loading and unloading.

    Drop the tailgate, please, and I'll load these pallets.
  2. The hinged rear door of a hatchback.

    UK · especially
    Open up the tailgate, please, and retrieve her suitcases.
  3. The downstream gate in the lock on a canal or river, or in an irrigation system.

    The locktender closed the tailgate and the chamber started to fill.
  4. Ellipsis of tailgate party.

    US · abbreviation · alt-of · ellipsis
    Are you coming to the tailgate? We'll be grilling brisket.
  5. A tunnel for drawing spent air away from the working face of a mine.

Where this word comes from

From tail + gate. Compare liftgate.

verb/ˈteɪlˌɡeɪt/UK, US
  1. To drive dangerously close behind another vehicle.

    intransitive · transitive
    That idiot has been tailgating me for the last five minutes.
  2. To follow another person through access control on their access, rather than on one’s own credentials, especially when entering a door controlled by a card reader.

  3. To privately purchase or sell a security immediately after trading in the same security for a client.

  4. To participate in a tailgate party.

    US · intransitive
Where this word comes from

From tail + gate. Compare liftgate.

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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.