Word.ws English Dictionary

tailing

tailing is the present participle and gerund of tail.

Noun

tailing (plural tailings)

  1. The act of following someone.
  2. The part of a projecting stone or brick inserted in a wall.
    • […]iron Bar forming a Tailing for the stones which lie in the doorways1813, Benjamin Dean Wyatt, Observations on the Design for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
  3. (obsolete) The lighter parts of grain separated from the seed by threshing and winnowing; chaff.
  4. A prolongation of current in a telegraph line, due to capacity in the line and causing signals to run together.

Meaning of tail

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...

See all 39 meanings of tail

Forms of tailing

pluraltailings

Phrases with tailing

Questions about tailing

What does tailing mean?
Tailing means the act of following someone.
What is tailing the present participle and gerund of?
Tailing is the present participle and gerund of tail.
What part of speech is tailing?
Tailing is a noun.
What is the plural of tailing?
The plural of tailing is tailings.

Words near tailing in the dictionary

  1. tailheads
  2. tailhole
  3. tailholes
  4. tailhook
  5. tailhooks
  6. tailing
  7. tailing away
  8. tailing down
  9. tailing in
  10. tailing off
  11. tailings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tailing (page history and authors); tail (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: “tailing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tailing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.