Word.ws English Dictionary

hightail

/ˈhaɪ.teɪl/

hightail verb: to move at full speed, especially in retreat.

Verb

hightail (third-person singular simple present hightails, present participle hightailing, simple past and past participle hightailed)

  1. (Canada, US, informal, transitive, usually) To move at full speed, especially in retreat.
    • He hightailed it toward town.
    • I want you to hightail your butt out of there before they come back.
    Synonyms:
    skedaddle, move quickly

Synonyms of hightail

Forms of hightail

third-person singular presenthightails
present participlehightailing
past participlehightailed
pasthightailed

Origin of hightail

From high + tail; refers to the behavior of fleeing animals, such as deer, that raise their tail when running away.

Words formed from hightail

Questions about hightail

What does hightail mean?
Hightail means to move at full speed, especially in retreat.
What part of speech is hightail?
Hightail is a verb.
How do you pronounce hightail?
Hightail is pronounced /ˈhaɪ.teɪl/.
What is the past tense of hightail?
The past tense of hightail is hightailed.

Words near hightail in the dictionary

  1. highstands
  2. highstreet
  3. highstreets
  4. highstrikes
  5. hight
  6. hightail
  7. hightail it
  8. hightailed
  9. hightailed it
  10. hightailing
  11. hightailing it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hightail (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hightail.ogg, en-au-hightail.ogg.

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