I. noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a dog wags its tail (= moves its tail from side to side to show pleasure )
▪
The dog stood up and wagged his tail.
rats' tails
shirt tail
tail light
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
bushy
▪
No sign of squirrels at ground level, not a print, not a glimpse of a bushy tail .
▪
It had a bushy red tail , which, oddly, Felicia had seen the night before.
▪
All of them give you fair warning of their character by deliberately making themselves conspicuous and waving their bushy tails .
▪
They're rodents - like rats, only with bushy tails .
forked
▪
Larger and rather more uniformly dark than Little Swift, and with a markedly narrower white rump and distinctly forked tail .
▪
Beside him stood a devil in red tights with horns and a forked tail .
▪
Complete white collar, paler rump and less forked tail are best distinctions from winter Whiskered Tern.
▪
In these superb light conditions its deeply forked tail glowed a rich chestnut.
▪
The only large predator of the region with a deeply forked tail , except for the Black Kite.
▪
He is growing horns and a forked tail here!
▪
Narrow, scythe-like wings, short usually forked tail adapted to very fast flight.
▪
Males are slimmer than females, with a more deeply forked tail fin.
long
▪
Heavy head, long tail , rectangular wings.
▪
They grow long tails as material streams away from their rocky cores driven by solar radiation.
▪
It looks like a slightly small-sized cross between a bee and a wasp, but with a longer drooping tail .
▪
A magpie overhead, its long tail black and belly white.
▪
It was a female, explained Bryan, and only the male proudly carries the two extra long black tail feathers.
▪
Males evolved long tails to charm females.
▪
Experiments have shown that female long-tailed widow birds prefer males with the longest tails .
▪
Does it have a long tail ?
short
▪
Smaller and less variable than Desert Lark, from which readily distinguished by dark bar at tip of shorter tail .
▪
All had their manes shorn short but their tails were long, though well groomed.
▪
In fact no other sandgrouse with any black on belly at all has a short tail .
▪
The front wings were less exaggerated, the rear overhang shorter and the tail a little taller.
▪
Juvenile has no crest and shorter tail .
▪
More often seen perched or flying low than soaring, when wings are held slightly crooked and rather short tail is noticeable.
■ NOUN
end
▪
I tie my next colour on to the tail end of the first yarn and pull it straight through.
▪
But this is the tail end of a really big set of stories about royal marriages.
▪
It was the tail end of the season and there was no time for a full-scale tour.
▪
To get him to face forward, I turned him by pushing at his tail end .
▪
Chapter 5 Saturday morning dawned late for me, and I just caught the tail end of Sport on Four.
▪
I did catch the tail end of them in my youth.
▪
It had been a bumpy ride, through the tail end of a thunderstorm.
▪
At the tail end of the nineteenth century, the Viennese politician Karl Lueger founded his power base on an anti-semitic platform.
feather
▪
From a dry stone wall inland, redstarts darted, like orange flames, tail feathers fanned and quivering.
▪
They also made fans of the tail feathers of the scissor-tail flycatcher, which they wore at the shoulder like epaulets.
▪
A barn owl's body feathers are mostly for warmth, while the wing and tail feathers are used for flight.
▪
Then you start fanning your tail feathers and puffing your neck in and out.
▪
Male has white tips to outer tail feathers and three white spots on outer wing quills.
▪
Emperor penguin chicks have a grayish down coat with dark wing and tail feathers , but this odd bird is all white.
▪
The rest of the tail feathers are more manoeuvrable.
fin
▪
He uses his enlarged tail fin to regularly splash them with water, until they hatch about two days later.
▪
Luxurystarved veterans tapped wartime savings to buy record numbers of wraparound windshields and tail fins .
▪
It has no tail fin like those of other fish, merely a fleshy stump.
▪
Picture a shallow pool with a glassy surface, and in the pool picture minnows fluttering their tail fins but otherwise stationary.
▪
Males are slimmer than females, with a more deeply forked tail fin .
▪
It is a conveyance of dreams: chrome, tail fins , pale blue bodywork.
pony
▪
A small beard grew around the mouth and a pony tail weaved down his back.
▪
An older man is walking a girl with a pony tail through a pattern that forms a large triangle.
▪
On others in close-up, her long pony tail swinging, laughing and shouting, eyes dark and glittering.
▪
Butler &038; Wilson earrings, £42 Right: Pull hair into a loose pony tail and secure with a covered elastic band.
▪
Twist pony tail round and make a gap in the middle of the hair above band.
▪
This younger woman was very attractive with a dark complexion and thick black hair tied in a pony tail .
▪
Her shiny, dark hair was done up in a pony tail with a big red bow.
▪
Her hair was scraped back in a pony tail , her face was smeared with mud.
rotor
▪
We have already seen that the weathercock effect due to forward flight makes the tail rotor too effective.
▪
He had Reacher and the gunner lean out to watch the very delicate tail rotor .
▪
This is inserted between the receiver and the tail rotor servo.
▪
Hovering at the front of the clearing, the tail rotor was only a few feet from the rear.
▪
Fig. 5.10 Lateral trim offset due to tail rotor .
▪
My tail rotor spun just a few feet from the ground.
▪
You should see the tail rotor slow right down or even stop.
▪
I was nervous about hitting the tail rotor on the rough ground.
section
▪
The tail section housed emergency rations and first aid kit.
▪
Above: Tim Benson's Swallow Tail has extra leading edges for the tail section .
▪
The bridge is a simple, chromed, face-mounted affair, with the strings located through the turned-up tail section .
shirt
▪
His shirt tails would come askew, his sleeves ride up.
▪
I stuffed my shirt tail back into my trousers and tried to straighten my tie.
▪
But a long shirt tail flopped down around his thighs.
■ VERB
turn
▪
She wanted to turn tail and run, but she couldn't have stood herself if she appeared such a coward.
▪
He caught sight of a few others, but they turned tail and vanished when they saw him through the mist.
▪
If one animal suddenly turns tail , it is liable to be attacked and might get injured.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a sting in the tail
▪
An omelette of rumour, speculation and downright lies, with many a sting in the tail.
▪
And there was a sting in the tail, he warned finally.
▪
But there's a sting in the tail.
▪
My stories from Lesbos seemed to carry a sting in the tail for both cultures.
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
▪
Christie was there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 6:30 a.m.
can't make head or/nor tail of sth
hot on sb's trail/tail
▪
But they were hot on the trail of a loathsome whine as the party in another mess pined for better days.
▪
Lieutenant Ward Bond was at the wheel of the police convertible hot on his tail.
▪
Once again Biddy / Beth flees, but both the Toddler and McGarr are hot on her trail.
in rats' tails
like a dog with two tails
nose to tail
▪
A golden yellow line replaces that of the Redline Rasbora, and follows an almost identical path from nose to tail.
▪
He led his female into a cave where they spawned nose to tail in typical mouthbrooder fashion.
▪
However, when they move around they can form a procession, following each other nose to tail like a miniature train.
▪
She says it's less noise, and traffic which used to be nose to tail now flows freely.
▪
The basic leopard is spotted almost from nose to tail.
top and tail
▪
Lengthier ones such as those in support of specific discovery are not suited and the standard part becomes little more than the top and tail.
▪
Peel off the tough outer skin of the silk squash, or top and tail the courgettes.
▪
There is no need to top and tail them.
▪
There will be four engines in operation with two trains to push, pull, top and tail, and double-head.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
Taffy always wags her tail when I come home.
▪
the tail of a comet
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Andersson tackled the question directly by experimentally altering the tail lengths of the males.
▪
Can you think of a sympathetic animal with a hairless tail ?
▪
It is a conveyance of dreams: chrome, tail fins, pale blue bodywork.
▪
Luxurystarved veterans tapped wartime savings to buy record numbers of wraparound windshields and tail fins.
▪
Miller noticed that, among the swallows he studied, the longest tails of the males were also the most symmetrical.
▪
The crews work their tail off and then only get six hours of rest a day.
▪
When I pedal-turned the tail away from the flames, my door flew open.
II. verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
away
▪
Since then it's tailed away .
off
▪
Use of mundic tailed off in the Fifties.
▪
When I tailed off he sat nodding, like a doctor considering a diagnosis.
▪
He said it would also be operated with shorter trains, reflecting a tailing off in the capital's explosive population growth.
▪
During the low-water flows, trout fishing was exceptional and has been since, although it has tailed off somewhat.
▪
For example writers usually form the beginnings of words reasonably well, but often this tails off towards the ends of words.
▪
Over the last week, Hasbro shares ran up as high as 46 3 / 4 before tailing off .
▪
Beyond a certain point however, the amount of improvement tailed off with increase in context.
▪
Eventually, our contact tailed off , and I thought no more about her until her name recently surfaced on front pages.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a sting in the tail
▪
An omelette of rumour, speculation and downright lies, with many a sting in the tail.
▪
And there was a sting in the tail, he warned finally.
▪
But there's a sting in the tail.
▪
My stories from Lesbos seemed to carry a sting in the tail for both cultures.
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
▪
Christie was there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 6:30 a.m.
can't make head or/nor tail of sth
hot on sb's trail/tail
▪
But they were hot on the trail of a loathsome whine as the party in another mess pined for better days.
▪
Lieutenant Ward Bond was at the wheel of the police convertible hot on his tail.
▪
Once again Biddy / Beth flees, but both the Toddler and McGarr are hot on her trail.
in rats' tails
like a dog with two tails
nose to tail
▪
A golden yellow line replaces that of the Redline Rasbora, and follows an almost identical path from nose to tail.
▪
He led his female into a cave where they spawned nose to tail in typical mouthbrooder fashion.
▪
However, when they move around they can form a procession, following each other nose to tail like a miniature train.
▪
She says it's less noise, and traffic which used to be nose to tail now flows freely.
▪
The basic leopard is spotted almost from nose to tail.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪
A group of photographers tailed the couple all over London.
▪
He claims police have been tailing him for several months.
▪
That police car has been tailing us for the last 5 miles.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪
Cars and small vans, with only disrepair in common, were head to tail , headlights burning, a few yards away.
▪
During the low-water flows, trout fishing was exceptional and has been since, although it has tailed off somewhat.
▪
He said it would also be operated with shorter trains, reflecting a tailing off in the capital's explosive population growth.
▪
Over the last week, Hasbro shares ran up as high as 46 3 / 4 before tailing off.
▪
The emissary of the Barbeques had tailed Mitchell as far as the top of the beach and hesitated to come closer.
▪
When I tailed off he sat nodding, like a doctor considering a diagnosis.