Word.ws English Dictionary

fishtail

/ˈfɪʃteɪl/

fishtail noun: the tail of a fish, or an object resembling this. Also the ellipsis of fishtail palm.

Noun

fishtail (plural fishtails)

  1. The tail of a fish, or an object resembling this.
  2. The skidding of the back of a vehicle from side to side.
  3. A kind of chisel with a flared blade.

Verb

fishtail (third-person singular simple present fishtails, present participle fishtailing, simple past and past participle fishtailed)

  1. (intransitive) To swing the back of a vehicle (originally an aircraft) from side to side.
    • As we approached the runway, the pilot fishtailed slightly to reduce landing speed.
  2. (transitive) To cause the back of (a vehicle) to swing from side to side.
    • But Bruce wasn't done baiting the jocks. He fishtailed the car; it swerved and reversed direction, heading straight for the three jocks who were chasing them on foot. It looked like he was going to run the car over the three men.2013, Jeffrey Bernhardt, The Indian: America's Waking Dream, Berkeley Radicals, War, Riots, Drugs and Revolution
  3. (intransitive) To move with the tail swinging from side to side in this way.
    • A large black and gold butterfly fish-tailed in and landed on a hydrangea bush almost at my elbow, moved its wings slowly up and down a few times, then took off heavily […]1943, Raymond Chandler, The High Window, Penguin, published 2005, page 3
    • She'd sprinted away like Betty Cuthbert and the blue F.J. Holden was fishtailing up the street as fast as it could go.1995, Paul Vautin, Turn It Up!, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, page 99

Also used as

fishtail is also the ellipsis of fishtail palm.

Forms of fishtail

Noun
pluralfishtails
Verb
third-person singular presentfishtails
present participlefishtailing
past participlefishtailed
pastfishtailed

Origin of fishtail

From Middle English fisch tayle, equivalent to fish + tail.

Words formed from fishtail

Phrases with fishtail

Questions about fishtail

What does fishtail mean?
Fishtail means the tail of a fish, or an object resembling this.
What part of speech is fishtail?
Fishtail can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce fishtail?
Fishtail is pronounced /ˈfɪʃteɪl/.
What is the plural of fishtail?
The plural of fishtail is fishtails.

Words near fishtail in the dictionary

  1. fishspears
  2. fishstick
  3. fishsticks
  4. fishstock
  5. fishstocks
  6. fishtail
  7. fishtail burner
  8. fishtail burners
  9. fishtail palm
  10. fishtail palms
  11. fishtail propeller

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fishtail (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-fishtail.wav.

Cite this entry: “fishtail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fishtail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.