tailings

tailings is the plural of tailing.

Noun

tailings pl (plural only)

(plural, plural-only) The waste that remains after the minerals have been extracted from an ore by ore dressing; the waste from coal mining.
- Meronym: culm
Synonyms:

mullock, culm
(plural, plural-only, alcohol production) The weak feints, the last fraction of product obtained at the end of distillation, typically impure and containing fusel oils.
- […] and it is made into a mash which is fermented and distilled in the same way that an ordinary grain mash is handled in a whisky distillery. The tailings from the still are first compressed to extract the water, and[…]1910, Chemical News and Journal of Industrial Science, page 42
Synonyms:

tail, tails
(plural, plural-only) Inferior or damaged grain, as well as seeds of other plants (weeds), removed from grain before milling or sowing.

tailing (plural tailings)

The act of following someone.
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
(obsolete) The lighter parts of grain separated from the seed by threshing and winnowing; chaff.
A prolongation of current in a telegraph line, due to capacity in the line and causing signals to run together.

What does tailings mean?: Tailings means the waste that remains after the minerals have been extracted from an ore by ore dressing; the waste from coal mining.
What is tailings the plural of?: Tailings is the plural of tailing.
What part of speech is tailings?: Tailings is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: tailings (page history and authors); tailing (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: 2026-09-02

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