Word.ws English Dictionary

scaletail

scaletail noun: any of the scaly-tailed species of flying squirrel, especially of Zenkerella insignis; a Cameroon scaly-tail.

scaletail: any of the scaly-tailed species of flying squirrel, especially of Zenkerella insignis; a Cameroon...
Image: Joseph Smit, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

scaletail (plural scaletails)

  1. Any of the scaly-tailed species of flying squirrel, especially of Zenkerella insignis; a Cameroon scaly-tail.
    • There is to be found in Africa, only, a flying-squirrel so different in structure and relationships that it is held to represent a separate order by some zoölogists, — the anomalurus lurus, or "scaletail."1907, Ernest Ingersoll, The life of animals: the mammals, page 446
    • The most generalised member of the family is the flightless scaletail (Zenkerella insignis) of West Africa, which has the appearance of a small grey squirrel, although furnished with scales on the tail.1910, Harmsworth Natural History: A Complete Survey of the Animal Kingdom, page 550

Examples of scaletail in a sentence

  • Scaly-tailed flying squirrels, or scaletails, are placed in 4 genera and about 12 species, all but one of which, the flightless scaletail (Zenkerella insignis), possess gliding membranes.1983, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropaedia (10 v.), page 204:
  • It can be found both in the capybara and the harvest mouse, in the beaver and the squirrel, and in the meadow mouse and the scaletail.2013, Pierre-P. Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation, →ISBN, page 6:

Forms of scaletail

pluralscaletails

Origin of scaletail

From scale + tail, from the scales that appear on the tails.

Questions about scaletail

What does scaletail mean?
Scaletail means any of the scaly-tailed species of flying squirrel, especially of Zenkerella insignis; a Cameroon scaly-tail.
How do you use scaletail in a sentence?
Scaly-tailed flying squirrels, or scaletails, are placed in 4 genera and about 12 species, all but one of which, the flightless scaletail (Zenkerella insignis), possess gliding membranes.
What part of speech is scaletail?
Scaletail is a noun.
What is the plural of scaletail?
The plural of scaletail is scaletails.

Words near scaletail in the dictionary

  1. scalesia
  2. scalesias
  3. scalesman
  4. scalesmen
  5. scalest
  6. scaletail
  7. scaletails
  8. scaleth
  9. Scaletta
  10. Scalettas
  11. scaleup

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scaletail (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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