Word.ws English Dictionary

tailswing

tailswing noun: when turning a heavy vehicle, the movement of the rear portion of the vehicle in the opposite direction from the direction the front end turns.

Noun

tailswing

  1. When turning a heavy vehicle, the movement of the rear portion of the vehicle in the opposite direction from the direction the front end turns.
    • The authorities provided the boats, and Smalley mounted machines on them that could dredge and clear weed, working in shallow waterways under low, narrow bridges, unhindered by a counterweight tailswing.1994, David Needham, Robert Dransfield, Business Studies, →ISBN, page 133
    • The tailswing radius may encroach over an active traffic lane or face interference from an obstruction.1999, Howard I. Shapiro, Jay P. Shapiro, Lawrence K. Shapiro, Cranes and derricks, →ISBN, page 268

Forms of tailswing

alternative formtail swing

Origin of tailswing

From tail + swing.

Questions about tailswing

What does tailswing mean?
Tailswing means when turning a heavy vehicle, the movement of the rear portion of the vehicle in the opposite direction from the direction the front end turns.
What part of speech is tailswing?
Tailswing is a noun.

Words near tailswing in the dictionary

  1. tailstands
  2. tailstock
  3. tailstocks
  4. tailstrike
  5. tailstrikes
  6. tailswing
  7. tailtap
  8. Tailte
  9. Tailtiu
  10. Tailu
  11. Tailuge

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tailswing (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:

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