Definition of tail

• n. - Limitation; abridgment.
• a. - Limited; abridged; reduced; curtailed; as, estate tail.
• n. - The terminal, and usually flexible, posterior appendage of an animal.
• n. - Any long, flexible terminal appendage; whatever resembles, in shape or position, the tail of an animal, as a catkin.
• n. - Hence, the back, last, lower, or inferior part of anything, -- as opposed to the head, or the superior part.
• n. - A train or company of attendants; a retinue.
• n. - 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.
• n. - The distal tendon of a muscle.
• n. - A downy or feathery appendage to certain achenes. It is formed of the permanent elongated style.
• n. - 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.
• n. - One of the strips at the end of a bandage formed by splitting the bandage one or more times.
• n. - A rope spliced to the strap of a block, by which it may be lashed to anything.
• n. - The part of a note which runs perpendicularly upward or downward from the head; the stem.
• n. - Same as Tailing, 4.
• n. - The bottom or lower portion of a member or part, as a slate or tile.
• n. - See Tailing, n., 5.
• v. t. - To follow or hang to, like a tail; to be attached closely to, as that which can not be evaded.
• v. t. - To pull or draw by the tail.
• v. i. - To hold by the end; -- said of a timber when it rests upon a wall or other support; -- with in or into.
• v. i. - To swing with the stern in a certain direction; -- said of a vessel at anchor; as, this vessel tails down stream.