Word.ws English Dictionary

tail

/ˈteːl/UK/ˈteɪ̯l/

tail noun: the caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to their posterior and near the anus or cloaca.

tail: the caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to their posterior and near the anus or cloaca
Image: Adrian Pingstone, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

tail (plural tails)

  1. The caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to their posterior and near the anus or cloaca.
    • Most primates have a tail and fangs.
  2. An object or part of an object resembling a tail in shape, such as the thongs on a cat-o'-nine-tails; a strand of material hanging from something.
    • Duretus writes a great praise of the Distill'd waters of those tails that hang on Willow Trees.1672, Gideon Harvey, Morbus Anglicus: or the Anatomy of Consumptions, page 112
    • Using a thin tapestry needle, weave the warp tails back into the fabric in a warpwise direction and trim off the excess.2026, Emily Barth, “Woolly Cocoon Bags”, in Handwoven, volume XLVII, number 1, page 37
  3. The back, last, lower, or inferior part of anything.
  4. The feathers attached to the pygostyle of a bird.
  5. The tail-end of any object.
    • And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the taile, […]1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Deuteronomy 28:13
    • It was soon over, and the unmoved magistrate calmly ordained that Deborah Williams, Elizabeth and Faith Wilson, should be tied to a cart's tail, and thus led through the principal streets of the town, receiving during their progress twenty lashes each, well laid on, upon the naked back.1862, Ballou's Dollar Monthly Magazine, volume 16, page 83
  6. The rear structure of an aircraft, the empennage.
  7. The visible stream of dust and gases blown from a comet by the solar wind.
  8. The latter part of a time period or event, or (collectively) persons or objects represented in this part.
  9. The part of a distribution most distant from the mode.
    • long tail
  10. One who surreptitiously follows another.
  11. The lower order of batsmen in the batting order, usually specialist bowlers.
  12. The lower loop of the letters in the Roman alphabet, as in g, q or y.
    Synonyms:
    descender
Show 19 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. (in plural) The side of a coin not bearing the head; normally the side on which the monetary value of the coin is indicated; the reverse.
  2. All the last terms of a sequence, from some term on.
    • A sequence (a#95;n) is said to be frequently 0 if every tail of the sequence contains 0.
  3. (US, colloquial) The buttocks or backside.
    • By Goddis sydes, syns I her thyder broughte, / She hath gote me more money with her tayle / Than hath some shyppe that into Bordews sayle.1499, John Skelton, The Bowge of Courte
    • They were wont to wipe their tailes [translating cul] (this vaine superstition of words must be left unto women) with a sponge, and that's the reason why Spongia in Latine is counted an obscene word[…].1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 49, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  4. (slang) The penis of a person or animal.
  5. (slang, uncountable) Sexual intercourse.
    • I'm gonna get me some tail tonight.
    • “Innarested in a little tail t’night?” “Me?” I said. Which was a very dumb answer, but it’s quite embarrassing when somebody comes right up and asks you a question like that.1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 13, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC
  6. (kayaking) The stern; the back of the kayak.
  7. A train or company of attendants; a retinue.
    • Ah! if you Saxon Duinhé-wassal (English gentleman) saw but the chief with his tail on. […] that is, with all his usual followers1814, Walter Scott, Waverley: Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since, page 238
  8. The distal tendon of a muscle.
  9. A filamentous projection on the tornal section of each hind wing of certain butterflies.
  10. A downy or feathery appendage of certain achens, formed of the permanent elongated style.
  11. A portion of an incision, at its beginning or end, which does not go through the whole thickness of the skin, and is more painful than a complete incision; called also tailing.
  12. One of the strips at the end of a bandage formed by splitting the bandage one or more times.
  13. A rope spliced to the strap of a block, by which it may be lashed to anything.
  14. The part of a note which runs perpendicularly upward or downward from the head; the stem.
  15. A tailing.
  16. The bottom or lower portion of a member or part such as a slate or tile.
  17. (colloquial, dated) A tailcoat.
  18. Synonym of pigtail (“a short length of twisted electrical wire”).
    Synonyms:
    pigtail
  19. The final fraction of a distillation run, typically containing impurities and fusel oils.
    Synonyms:
    tailings

Verb

tail (third-person singular simple present tails, present participle tailing, simple past and past participle tailed)

  1. To hold by the end; said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support; with in or into
  2. To swing with the stern in a certain direction; said of a vessel at anchor.
    • This vessel tails downstream.
  3. To follow or hang to, like a tail; to be attached closely to, as that which can not be evaded.
    • Nevertheless his bond of two thousand pounds, wherewith he was tailed, continued uncancelled.1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)
  4. (transitive) To follow and observe surreptitiously.
    • Tail that car!
  5. To pull or draw by the tail.
    • The conqu'ring foe they soon afailid,
      First Trulla stav'd, and Cerdon tail'd1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished...

Adjective

tail

  1. Limited; abridged; reduced; curtailed.
    • estate tail

Noun (2)

tail

  1. Limitation of inheritance to certain heirs.
    • tail male
    • in tail

Proper noun capitalized: Tail

Tail

  1. (Chinese) A Chinese constellation coinciding with the tail of Scorpius, one of the 28 lunar mansions and the tail of Azure Dragon.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:Tail.

tail meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

tail in Hindi

appendage of an animal — see also dock
पूंछ pūñch, पूँछ pū̃ch, दुम dum

tail in Tamil

appendage of an animal — see also dock
வால் vāl

tail in Marathi

tail
शेपटी śepṭī

tail in Urdu

appendage of an animal — see also dock
دُم dum, پُون٘چھ pū̃ch
More languagesFewer languages
tail in Bengali
লেজ lej
tail in Telugu
తోక tōka
tail in Malayalam
വാല് vāl
tail in Kannada
ಬಾಲ bāla, ತೋಕೆ tōke
tail in Punjabi
ਪੂਸ਼ pūś, ਦੁਮ dum, ਦੁੰਬ dumb
tail in Gujarati
પૂછડી pūchḍī
tail in Odia
ପୁଛ pucha
tail in Sanskrit
शेप śépa
tail in Sinhala
අවර awara
tail in Assamese
নেজ nez, নেগুৰ negur
tail in Nepali
पुच्छर pucchar
tail in Pashto
لم lëm
tail in Tagalog
buntot
tail in Arabic
ذَنَب ḏanab, ذَيْل ḏayl, ديل dél, ذيل dēl
tail in Malay
ekor, buntut
tail in Indonesian
ekor, buntut
tail in Persian
دُم dum, دُنْب dunb
tail in Thai
หาง hǎang, ก้อย gɔ̂i
tail in Vietnamese
đuôi, theo đuôi
tail in Myanmar
အမြီး a.mri:

Examples of tail in a sentence

  • As the cart went by, its horse lifted its tail and did its business.
  • That nanny over there with the white tail has kidded every year for the last five years.
  • The passenger turned around and walked backward, towards the tail of the aircraft.

All 40 example sentences with tail

Synonyms of tail

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of tail

Forms of tail

Noun
pluraltails
Verb
third-person singular presenttails
present participletailing
past participletailed
pasttailed

Past tense of tail: tailed

Plural of tail: tails

Origin of tail

From Middle English tail, taile, taille, tayil, tayl, tayle, tayll, teil, tæȝel, from Old English tæġel, tæġl (“tail”), from Proto-West Germanic *tagl, from Proto-Germanic *taglą (“hair, fiber; hair of a tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *doḱ- (“hair of the tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- (“to tear, fray, shred”). Cognates Cognate with German Zagel (“tail”), Danish, Faroese, and Icelandic tagl (“tail”), Swedish tagel (“horsehair”), Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻 (tagl, “hair”); also Serbo-Croatian дла̏ка, dlȁka (“single hair”), Slovene dlaka (“single hair”), Northern Kurdish dezî (“cotton, thread”), Sanskrit दशा (daśā, “border, fringe, hem”). In some senses, apparently by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.

From Anglo-Norman, probably from a shortened form of entail.

From tail, a semantic loan from Chinese 尾.

Words formed from tail

Phrases with tail

165 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with tail

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tail

What does tail mean?
Tail means the caudal appendage of an animal that is attached to their posterior and near the anus or cloaca.
What is tail in Hindi?
Tail in Hindi is पूंछ (pūñch), पूँछ (pū̃ch), दुम (dum). See Tail meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is tail?
Tail can be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tail?
Tail is pronounced /ˈteɪ̯l/ (UK).
What is the plural of tail?
The plural of tail is tails.

Words near tail in the dictionary

  1. taikhanas
  2. taiko
  3. taikonaut
  4. taikonauts
  5. taikos
  6. tail
  7. tail away
  8. tail between one's legs
  9. tail block
  10. tail blocks
  11. tail bone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tail (page history and authors); Tail (page history and authors); शेपटी (Marathi) (page history and authors); ತೋಕೆ (Kannada) (page history and authors); لم (Pashto) (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-us-tail.ogg, en-au-tail.ogg.

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