Word.ws English Dictionary

roostertail

roostertail noun: a violent fountain or spray, especially one caused by a moving vehicle or boat.

roostertail: a violent fountain or spray, especially one caused by a moving vehicle or boat
Image: Bernina, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

roostertail (plural roostertails)

  1. A violent fountain or spray, especially one caused by a moving vehicle or boat.
    • A roostertail of snow kicked up behind me.1988, Libby Riddles, Race Across Alaska: First Woman to Win the Iditarod Tells Her Story, →ISBN, page 21

Verb

roostertail (third-person singular simple present roostertails, present participle roostertailing, simple past and past participle roostertailed)

  1. To pour like a fountain; to spurt violently.
    • The red dust of Tanguieta rolling and roostertailing behind us.2005, Pete Watson, “The Prisoner”, in The Heart of the Lion, →ISBN
  2. To move rapidly through water, leaving a roostertail wake.
    • The shiny new aluminum tribal Jet-Boat roostertailed up the river, straight for us, kicking up a wake that rocked our boat hard enough to knock the cards off the cooler.2005, Dave Ames, A Good Life Wasted, →ISBN, page 197

Forms of roostertail

Noun
pluralroostertails
alternative formrooster-tail
Verb
third-person singular presentroostertails
present participleroostertailing
past participleroostertailed
pastroostertailed

Origin of roostertail

From rooster + tail, from analogy with the shape of a rooster's feathered tail.

Questions about roostertail

What does roostertail mean?
Roostertail means a violent fountain or spray, especially one caused by a moving vehicle or boat.
What part of speech is roostertail?
Roostertail can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of roostertail?
The plural of roostertail is roostertails.

Words near roostertail in the dictionary

  1. roosterly
  2. roosterness
  3. roosters
  4. roostership
  5. roosterships
  6. roostertail
  7. roostertailed
  8. roostertailing
  9. roostertails
  10. roosting
  11. roostings

Source and license

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