tail – English noun declension

English noun forms of tail

Noun: tail
Singulartail
Pluraltails

Sample Sentences

  • Most primates have a tail and fangs.
  • Duretus writes a great praise of the Distill'd waters of those tails that hang on Willow Trees. [1672, Gideon Harvey, Morbus Anglicus: or the Anatomy of Consumptions, page 112:]
  • Using a thin tapestry needle, weave the warp tails back into the fabric in a warpwise direction and trim off the excess. [2026, Emily Barth, “Woolly Cocoon Bags”, in Handwoven, volume XLVII, number 1, page 37:]
  • And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the taile, […] [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Deuteronomy 28:13:]
  • It was soon over, and the unmoved magistrate calmly ordained that Deborah Williams, Elizabeth and Faith Wilson, should be tied to a cart's tail, and thus led through the principal streets of the town, receiving during their progress twenty lashes each, well laid on, upon the naked back. [1862, Ballou's Dollar Monthly Magazine, volume 16, page 83:]
  • long tail
  • A sequence (a#95;n) is said to be frequently 0 if every tail of the sequence contains 0.
  • By Goddis sydes, syns I her thyder broughte, / She hath gote me more money with her tayle / Than hath some shyppe that into Bordews sayle. [1499, John Skelton, The Bowge of Courte:]
  • They were wont to wipe their tailes [translating cul] (this vaine superstition of words must be left unto women) with a sponge, and that's the reason why Spongia in Latine is counted an obscene word[…]. [1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 49, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:]
  • I'm gonna get me some tail tonight.
  • “Innarested in a little tail t’night?” “Me?” I said. Which was a very dumb answer, but it’s quite embarrassing when somebody comes right up and asks you a question like that. [1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 13, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC:]
  • On the bosom of young Abigail
  • Was written the price of her tail
  • And on her behind
  • For the use of the blind
  • Was the same information in Braille [1971, “Abigail”, in Live at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, performed by The Corries:]
  • Ah! if you Saxon Duinhé-wassal (English gentleman) saw but the chief with his tail on. […] that is, with all his usual followers [1814, Walter Scott, Waverley: Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since, page 238:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Germanic *taglą
3. Proto-West Germanic *tagl
4. Old English tæġl
5. Middle English tayl
6. English tail
7. From Middle English tail, taile, taille, tayil, tayl, tayle, tayll, teil, tæȝel, from Old English tæġel, 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”).
8. Cognates
9. Cognate with German Zagel (“tail”), Danish, Faroese, and Icelandic tagl (“tail”), Swedish tagel (“horsehair”), Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻 (tagl, “hair”); also Serbo-Croatian дла̏ка, dlȁka (“single hair”), Slovene dlaka (“single hair”), Northern Kurdish dezî (“cotton, thread”), Sanskrit दशा (daśā, “border, fringe, hem”).
10. In some senses, apparently by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail. See: Middle English Nouns 'tail', Old English Nouns 'tæġel', German Nouns 'Zagel', Swedish Nouns 'tagel', Gothic Nouns '𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻'.

Verbs referencing "tail"

Irish Nouns dual, Latvian Nouns desa, Danish Nouns tagl, Old Norse Nouns tagl, German Nouns Zagel, Swedish Nouns tagel.