tail

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The long, thin part that sticks out at the back of an animal's body.

   The dog wagged its tail happily.

2. 2
   noun

   The back or end part of something, often shaped like a tail.

   The tail of the plane was damaged in the storm.

3. 3
   noun

   The least common or extreme part of a range of values.

   The survey showed a long tail of rare answers.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Tail comes from an Old English word whose underlying sense was “hair” or specifically the hairy tail of an animal such as a horse; its use later broadened to tails generally. The verb, recorded from the early sixteenth century, first meant to fasten something to the rear, while the sense “follow closely” developed in American English around the beginning of the twentieth century.

From Middle English tail, tayl, teil, from Old English tæġl (“tail”), from Proto-West Germanic *tagl, from Proto-Germanic *taglą (“hair, fiber; hair of a tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *doḱ- (“hair of the tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- (“to tear, fray, shred”). Cognate with Scots tail (“tail”), Saterland Frisian Tail (“tail, end”), West Frisian teil (“tail”), Dutch teil (“tail, haulm, blade”), Low German Tagel (“twisted scourge, whip of thongs and ropes; end of a rope”), German Zagel (“tail”), dialectal Danish tavl (“hair of the tail”), Swedish tagel (“hair of the tail, horsehair”),…

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary