Word.ws English Dictionary

tailspin

tailspin noun: the rapid, uncontrollable descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral.

tailspin: the rapid, uncontrollable descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral
Image: H. Raab ( Vesta ), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tailspin (plural tailspins)

  1. The rapid, uncontrollable descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral.
    • The loss of the third engine threw the plane into a tailspin.
  2. (figuratively) A severe mental or emotional collapse; emotional breakdown.
    • Just hours after leaving the institution, she suffered another tailspin.
  3. (figuratively) Any sharp, sustained, often uncontrollable descent or decline.
    • The present stock tailspin proves bankruptcy is imminent.
    • But I was reading a statement that either you made or was part of your movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, and it said we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tailspin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and...2007, Perspectives on climate change, Washington : U.S. G.P.O., →ISBN, page 49

Verb

tailspin (third-person singular simple present tailspins, present participle tailspinning, simple past and past participle tailspun or tailspinned)

  1. Of an aircraft: to go into a rapid, uncontrollable descent in a steep spiral.
  2. (figuratively) To go into a sharp, sustained, often uncontrollable descent or decline.

tailspin meaning in Urdu

tailspin in Urdu

چکر غوطہ

Forms of tailspin

Noun
pluraltailspins
Verb
third-person singular presenttailspins
present participletailspinning
past participletailspun
pasttailspun
past participletailspinned
pasttailspinned

Origin of tailspin

From tail + spin.

Questions about tailspin

What does tailspin mean?
Tailspin means the rapid, uncontrollable descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral.
What is tailspin in Urdu?
Tailspin in Urdu is چکر غوطہ. See Tailspin meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is tailspin?
Tailspin can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of tailspin?
The plural of tailspin is tailspins.

Words near tailspin in the dictionary

  1. tailslides
  2. tailspeed
  3. tailspeeds
  4. tailspike
  5. tailspikes
  6. tailspin
  7. tailspine
  8. tailspinned
  9. tailspinning
  10. tailspins
  11. tailspot

Source and license

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