Word.ws English Dictionary

chased one's tail

chased one's tail is the simple past and past participle of chase one's tail.

Meaning of chase one's tail

Verb

chase one's tail (third-person singular simple present chases one's tail, present participle chasing one's tail, simple past and past participle chased one's tail)

  1. (idiomatic) To busily try to perform many tasks or to repeatedly revise one's plans, especially with inefficient use of one's time and limited results.
    • People wanting to get married . . . would have to trail around separately to arrange flowers, cars, a photographer, the cake and a reception venue. . . . "At the moment, they have to chase their tail making sure all these things are done."1994 August 4, Lynn Eaton, “Planning a wedding in one easy stop”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 26 Jun 2014
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see chase, one's, tail.

Questions about chased one's tail

What is chased one's tail the simple past and past participle of?
Chased one's tail is the simple past and past participle of chase one's tail.

Words near chased one's tail in the dictionary

  1. chased after
  2. chased away
  3. chased down
  4. chased moonbeams
  5. chased off
  6. chased one's tail
  7. chased pennies with dollars
  8. chased rainbows
  9. chased shadows
  10. chased skirt
  11. chased tail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chased one's tail (page history and authors); chase one's tail (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “chased one's tail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chased_one%27s_tail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.