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TAILS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Formalwear consisting of full evening dress for men
Synonyms:
dress suit; full dress; tail coat; tailcoat; tails; white tie; white tie and tails
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("tails" is a kind of...):
evening clothes; evening dress; eveningwear; formalwear (attire to wear on formal occasions in the evening)
Meronyms (parts of "tails"):
morning coat; swallow-tailed coat; swallowtail (a man's full-dress jacket with two long tapering tails at the back)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (third person singular) of the verb tail
Context examples:
“I fancy that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails.”
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
I am sure that you cannot fail to be delighted with the traces of heredity shown in the p’s and in the tails of the g’s.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In a barber's window I saw tails of hair with the prices marked, and one black tail, not so thick as mine, was forty dollars.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
An enzyme first isolated from firefly tails that catalyzes the production of light in the reaction between luciferin and ATP.
(Luciferase, NCI Thesaurus)
They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had gone a hundred yards.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been partaking.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
They had no tails, nor any hair at all on their buttocks, except about the anus, which, I presume, nature had placed there to defend them as they sat on the ground, for this posture they used, as well as lying down, and often stood on their hind feet.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Perhaps some of us were rather too full of mischief at times, flying down to pull the tails of the animals that had no wings, chasing birds, and throwing nuts at the people who walked in the forest.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
