shirttails

Noun

shirttail (plural shirttails)

1. The single or split (then rather plural) bottom part of a shirt, below the waist, especially in the back, which, when not tucked into trousers or other vestment, hangs over the wearer's tail-end, like a tail.
   • According to Linder, one of the rituals of the hunt entailed cutting off the shirttail of a hunter who shot at and missed a deer.1996, Christopher A. LaLonde, William Faulkner and the Rites of Passage, page 10
2. (broadly) The tail-end or periphery of something.
   • There was something — did you ever catch hold of the shirttail of a dream and try to pull it back into your consciousness?1977, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - Volume 53, page 60
3. A tenuous connection.
   • Although consumers' cooperatives have not yet been benefitted, the more they become tied on to the shirttail of the agricultural bloc, the more political power they are going to have.1939, Ohio State University. College of Commerce and Administration, College of Commerce conference series, page 68
4. A distant kinship.
   • She belongs to the true sisterhood of the majestic five daughters born to America's inland Neptune, but she always has been regarded as a poor relation, a sort of shirttail cousin, by her big sisters.1977, William Ratigan, Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals, →ISBN, page 283
5. A small portion
   • “What good's a one-horse farm, I ask you, a few acres of tobacco and a shirttail of corn and cotton—just enough to see a man through the winter and maybe buy seed to plant and get another run till the crops are in?1960, Guy Owen, Season of Fear, page 24
6. Something small and unimportant.
   • He can't get no further behind. He can sholy take care of this little shirttail of a farm while me and you are whupping them Japanese.1951, William Faulkner, “Two Soldiers”, in Collected Stories, page 84