noun ·see tailing, ·noun, 5.
2. tail ·noun limitation; abridgment.
3. tail ·noun ·same·as tailing, 4.
4. tail ·vt to pull or draw by the tail.
5. tail ·noun the distal tendon of a muscle.
6. tail ·add. ·noun a tailed coat; a tail coat.
7. tail ·noun a train or company of attendants; a retinue.
8. tail ·adj limited; abridged; reduced; curtailed; as, estate tail.
9. tail ·noun the bottom or lower portion of a member or part, as a slate or tile.
10. tail ·noun a rope spliced to the strap of a block, by which it may be lashed to anything.
11. tail ·noun the part of a note which runs perpendicularly upward or downward from the head; the stem.
12. tail ·noun the terminal, and usually flexible, posterior appendage of an animal.
13. tail ·noun one of the strips at the end of a bandage formed by splitting the bandage one or more times.
14. tail ·noun a downy or feathery appendage to certain achenes. it is formed of the permanent elongated style.
15. tail ·vt to follow or hang to, like a tail; to be attached closely to, as that which can not be evaded.
xvi. tail ·add. ·noun in flying machines, a plane or group of planes used at the rear to confer stability.
xvii. tail ·vi to hold by the end;
said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support;
with in or into.
xviii. tail ·noun hence, the back, last, lower, or inferior part of anything, as opposed to the head, or the superior part.
xix. tail ·vi to swing with the stern in a certain direction;
said of a vessel at anchor; as, this vessel tails down stream.
xx. tail ·noun any long, flexible terminal appendage; whatever resembles, in shape or position, the tail of an animal, as a catkin.
xxi. tail ·noun a portion of an incision, at its beginning or end, which does not go through the whole thickness of the skin, and is more painful than a complete incision;
called also tailing.
xxii. tail ·add. ·noun in some forms of rope-laying machine, pieces of rope attached to the iron bar passing through the grooven wooden top containing the strands, for wrapping around the rope to be laid.
xxiii. tail ·noun the side of a coin opposite to that which bears the head, effigy, or date; the reverse;
rarely used except in the expression "heads or tails," employed when a coin is thrown up for the purpose of deciding some point by its fall.