Word.ws English Dictionary

trail behind

trail behind verb: to increase or to succeed at a rate lower than (something else).

Verb

trail behind (third-person singular simple present trails behind, present participle trailing behind, simple past and past participle trailed behind)

  1. (transitive) To increase or to succeed at a rate lower than (something else).
    • Tech stocks trailed behind the overall market today.
    • In many constituencies, over 30% of the second vote went to the AfD. The CDU and SPD trailed far behind.2025 February 25, Kristin Zeier, Gianna-Ciara Grün, “German election results explained in graphics”, in Deutsche Welle
  2. (transitive) To follow (someone) slowly, usually surreptitiously.

Forms of trail behind

third-person singular presenttrails behind
present participletrailing behind
past participletrailed behind
pasttrailed behind

Questions about trail behind

What does trail behind mean?
Trail behind means to increase or to succeed at a rate lower than (something else).
What part of speech is trail behind?
Trail behind is a verb.
What is the past tense of trail behind?
The past tense of trail behind is trailed behind.

Words near trail behind in the dictionary

  1. Traiguén
  2. trail
  3. trail angel
  4. trail angels
  5. trail away
  6. trail behind
  7. trail bike
  8. trail bikes
  9. trail boat
  10. trail boats
  11. trail braking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: trail behind (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: “trail behind.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trail_behind. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.