rattail en · NOUN
Pronunciation
- (US) audio
- răt′-tāl′
- /ˈɹæt.teɪl/
Etymology
From rat + tail: all of the nonliteral senses come from something else's fancied resemblance to the tail of a rat.
Meanings
-
Any of the large dark-colored deep-sea fish of the Macrouridae family of ray-finned fish.
In the North Atlantic, Russians pioneered the harvesting of rattails, a ubiquitous deep fish with big eyes and a long tail that swishes back and forth in a sinuous motion.
1995 December 26, William J. Broad, “Creatures of the Deep Find Their Way to the Table”, in The New York Times:
- A fish, a California chimera (Hydrolagus colliei, syn. Chimaera colliei).
-
A hairstyle characterized by a long lock of tail-like hair dangling from the back of the head; the dangling lock itself.
All of which could explain why, when I had my hair styled in a tight ponytail for the shoot accompanying this feature, most people who saw me thought I looked "unapproachable" (which might simply be a polite way of saying: "You looked like you had a rattail and a Croydon facelift").
2013 July 28, Elizabeth Day, The Observer:
- A type of file (cutting tool) with a round cross section and usually also a taper toward the distal end.
- (slang) A towel that has been tightly twisted along the diagonal to make a rudimentary whip with a towel corner at the tip, typically used in juvenile pranks.
- An excrescence growing from the pastern to the middle of the shank of a horse.
- The flowering plant Stachytarpheta cayennensis.
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| rattails | Number=Plur | lexicographic | |
| rat-tail | alternative | lexicographic |
Deriveds
rattail radish · giant rattail · rattail cactus · rattail crassula
Hypernyms
Relateds
Synonyms
rat-tail file · grenadier · macrourid · whiptail
Translations (13)
fr queue de rat (fish) · de Rattenschwanz (fish) · fr queue-de-rat (hair) · it codino (hair) · nl rattenstaart (hair) · pl mysi ogonek (hair) · fr grenadier (fish) · de Rattenschwanz (hair) · es cola de rata (hair) · ru макру́рус (fish) · es granadero (fish) · de Grenadierfische (fish) · es cola de rata (fish)