Word.ws English Dictionary

nose to tail

nose to tail adjective: arranged in close formation, one behind the other.

Adjective

nose to tail (not comparable)

  1. (UK) Arranged in close formation, one behind the other.
  2. Using every possible part of the animal.

Adverb

nose to tail (not comparable)

  1. (UK) Moving slowly in this manner.
  2. Entirely, from head to toe.
    • A vulture can wolf more than two pounds of meat in a minute; a sizable crowd can strip a zebra—nose to tail—in 30 minutes.2015, Elizabeth Royte, Vultures Are Revolting. Here’s Why We Need to Save Them., National Geographic (December 2015)https://web.archive.org/web/20151213095110/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01...

Noun

nose to tail (plural nose to tails)

  1. (Australia) A minor traffic accident where one vehicle runs in to the back of another.

Synonyms of nose to tail

Forms of nose to tail

Adjective
alternative formnose-to-tail
Noun
pluralnose to tails

Questions about nose to tail

What does nose to tail mean?
Nose to tail means arranged in close formation, one behind the other.
What part of speech is nose to tail?
Nose to tail can be an adjective, an adverb or a noun.

Words near nose to tail in the dictionary

  1. nose stud
  2. nose tackle
  3. nose tackles
  4. nose test
  5. nose tests
  6. nose to tail
  7. nose to tails
  8. nose to the grindstone
  9. nose trimmer
  10. nose trimmers
  11. nose weight

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nose to 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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-nose to tail.ogg.

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