Word.ws English Dictionary

swingtail

swingtail noun: a hinged tail section on an airplane that can open up, providing access to the interior of the fuselage.

Noun

swingtail (plural swingtails)

  1. A hinged tail section on an airplane that can open up, providing access to the interior of the fuselage.
    • During the flight to California to deliver the first swingtail to Flying Tiger Lines, Coe cruised at 12,000 to 16,000 feet, indicating 278 knots for a true airspeed of 398 mph.1961 October, Richard B. Weeghm, “Aviation Fuel”, in Flying Magazine, volume 69, number 4, page 107
    • As Wheatcroft has pointed out the development of new all-cargo freighters is essential for economic progress, so with the introduction of the swingtail Canadair CL 44 D4 freighter and another all-cargo service by Pan American Airways shipments by air should improve.1965, JA Soulsby, “The Shannon free airport scheme: A new approach to industrial development”, in The Scottish Geographical Magazine, volume 81, number 2

Examples of swingtail in a sentence

  • Their first flight took the company's CL‐44 swingtail freighter to Hong Kong in September 1970.1999, I Lobo, M Zairi, “Competitive benchmarking in the air cargo industry: Part I”, in Benchmarking: An International Journal, volume 6...
  • Two other interesting configurations also considered were a removable tail and a vertical swingtail.2008, K Poechlauer, CA Vyeson, “The 747-400 Dreamlifter-Swing Tail Door Alignment and Latch Mechanism”, in SAE International Journal of...

Forms of swingtail

pluralswingtails

Origin of swingtail

From swing + tail.

Questions about swingtail

What does swingtail mean?
Swingtail means a hinged tail section on an airplane that can open up, providing access to the interior of the fuselage.
How do you use swingtail in a sentence?
Their first flight took the company's CL‐44 swingtail freighter to Hong Kong in September 1970.
What part of speech is swingtail?
Swingtail is a noun.
What is the plural of swingtail?
The plural of swingtail is swingtails.

Words near swingtail in the dictionary

  1. swingsets
  2. swingshifter
  3. swingshifters
  4. swingstock
  5. swingstocks
  6. swingtail
  7. swingtails
  8. swingtrading
  9. swingtree
  10. swingtrees
  11. swingy

Source and license

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