tail

• enPR: tāl, IPA^(key): /teɪl/

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• Homophone: tale
• Rhymes: -eɪl

From Middle English tail, tayl, teil, from Old English tæġl (“tail”), from Proto-Germanic *taglaz, *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”). Cognate with Scots tail (“tail”), Dutch teil (“tail, haulm, blade”), Low German tagel (“a twisted scourge, a whip of thongs and ropes, a rope”), German Zagel (“tail”), Danish dialectal tavl (“hair of the tail”), Swedish tagel (“hair of the tail, horsehair”), Norwegian tagl (“tail”), Icelandic tagl (“tail, horsetail, ponytail”), Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻 (tagl, “hair”). In some senses, apparently by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.

tail (plural tails)

1. (anatomy) The caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to its posterior and near the anus.

   Most primates have a tail and fangs.

2. The tail-end of an object, e.g. the rear of an aircraft's fuselage, containing the tailfin.
3. An object or part of an object resembling a tail in shape, such as the thongs on a cat-o'-nine-tails.
   • 1672, Gideon Harvey, Morbus Anglicus: or the Anatomy of Consumptions‎, page 112:

     Duretus writes a great praise of the Distill'd waters of those tails that hang on Willow Trees.

4. The rear structure of an aircraft, the empennage.
5. Specifically, the visible stream of dust and gases blown from a comet by the solar wind.
6. The latter part of a time period or event, or (collectively) persons or objects represented in this part.
7. (statistics) The part of a distribution most distant from the mode; as, a long tail.
8. One who surreptitiously follows another.
9. (cricket) The last four or five batsmen in the batting order, usually specialist bowlers.
10. (typography) The lower loop of the letters in the Roman alphabet, as in g, q or y.
11. (chiefly in the plural) The side of a coin not bearing the head; normally the side on which the monetary value of the coin is indicated; the reverse.
12. (mathematics) All the last terms of a sequence, from some term on.

    A sequence ${\displaystyle (a_{n})}$ is said to be frequently ${\displaystyle 0}$ if every tail of the sequence contains ${\displaystyle 0}$ .

13. (now colloquial, chiefly US) The buttocks or backside.
    • 1499, John Skelton, The Bowge of Courte:

      By Goddis sydes, syns I her thyder broughte, / She hath gote me more money with her tayle / Than hath some shyppe that into Bordews sayle.

    • 1603, John Florio, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, chapter 49, in The Essayes, […], book I, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

      They were wont to wipe their tailes [transl. cul] (this vaine superstition of words must be left unto women) with a sponge, and that's the reason why Spongia in Latine is counted an obscene word […].

14. (slang) The penis of a person or animal.
15. (slang, uncountable) Sexual intercourse.

    I'm gonna get me some tail tonight.

16. (kayaking) The stern; the back of the kayak.
17. The back, last, lower, or inferior part of anything.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Deuteronomy 28:13:

      And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the taile, […]

    • 1862, Ballou's Dollar Monthly Magazine (volume 16, page 83)

      It was soon over, and the unmoved magistrate calmly ordained that Deborah Williams, Elizabeth and Faith Wilson, should be tied to a cart's tail, and thus led through the principal streets of the town, receiving during their progress twenty lashes each, well laid on, upon the naked back.

18. A train or company of attendants; a retinue.
    • 1814, Walter Scott, Waverley: Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since‎, page 238:

      Ah! if you Saxon Duinhé-wassal (English gentleman) saw but the chief with his tail on. […] that is, with all his usual followers

19. (anatomy) The distal tendon of a muscle.
20. A downy or feathery appendage of certain achens, formed of the permanent elongated style.
21. (surgery) 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.
22. One of the strips at the end of a bandage formed by splitting the bandage one or more times.
23. (nautical) A rope spliced to the strap of a block, by which it may be lashed to anything.
24. (music) The part of a note which runs perpendicularly upward or downward from the head; the stem.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Moore (Encyc. of Music) to this entry?)

25. (mining) A tailing.
26. (architecture) The bottom or lower portion of a member or part such as a slate or tile.
27. (colloquial, dated) A tailcoat.

• (sexual intercourse): ass, poontang, poon, pussy, punani, skin, tang; See also Thesaurus:copulation

• caudal

tail (third-person singular simple present tails, present participle tailing, simple past and past participle tailed)

1. (transitive) To follow and observe surreptitiously.

   Tail that car!

2. (architecture) To hold by the end; said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support; with in or into
3. (nautical) To swing with the stern in a certain direction; said of a vessel at anchor.

   This vessel tails downstream.

4. To follow or hang to, like a tail; to be attached closely to, as that which can not be evaded.
   • Fuller

     Nevertheless his bond of two thousand pounds, wherewith he was tailed, continued uncancelled.

5. To pull or draw by the tail.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Hudibras to this entry?)

From Anglo-Norman, probably from a shortened form of entail.

tail

1. (law) Limited; abridged; reduced; curtailed.

   estate tail

tail (plural tails)

1. (law) Limitation of inheritance to certain heirs.

   tail male — limitation to male heirs

   in tail — subject to such a limitation

• Ital, LIAT, alit, ital, lait, lati, tali

tail

1. Alternative form of tayl

tail

1. shit, dung

• maer biswail