"shirttail" meaning in English

See shirttail in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: shirttails [plural]
Etymology: shirt + tail Etymology templates: {{compound|en|shirt|tail}} shirt + tail Head templates: {{en-noun}} shirttail (plural shirttails)
  1. The single or split (then rather plural) bottom part of a shirt, below the waist, especially in the back, which, when not tucked into trousers or other vestment, hangs over the wearer's tail-end, like a tail. Categories (topical): Clothing Translations (bottom part of shirt): hemdsslip (Dutch), slip (Dutch), paidanhelma (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-shirttail-en-noun-sz0HK9Nc Disambiguation of Clothing: 98 1 0 0 0 1 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 39 23 1 1 3 33 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 40 22 2 2 4 31 Disambiguation of 'bottom part of shirt': 86 1 0 1 12 0
  2. (by extension) The tail-end or periphery of something. Tags: broadly
    Sense id: en-shirttail-en-noun-w5JtBn4s Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 39 23 1 1 3 33
  3. A tenuous connection.
    Sense id: en-shirttail-en-noun-1Y1XD0fU
  4. A distant kinship.
    Sense id: en-shirttail-en-noun-f2d5ZNow
  5. A small portion
    Sense id: en-shirttail-en-noun-U~1Vv6FI
  6. Something small and unimportant.
    Sense id: en-shirttail-en-noun-lOQPMDid Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 39 23 1 1 3 33
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: shirt-tail Hypernyms: tail [figuratively] Derived forms: straight shirttail Related terms: coattail

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for shirttail meaning in English (7.9kB)

{
  "derived": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0 0 0 0",
      "word": "straight shirttail"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "shirt",
        "3": "tail"
      },
      "expansion": "shirt + tail",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "shirt + tail",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shirttails",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "shirttail (plural shirttails)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hypernyms": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0 0 0 0",
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ],
      "word": "tail"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0 0 0 0",
      "word": "coattail"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "39 23 1 1 3 33",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "40 22 2 2 4 31",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "98 1 0 0 0 1",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Clothing",
          "orig": "en:Clothing",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1996, Christopher A. LaLonde, William Faulkner and the Rites of Passage, page 10",
          "text": "According to Linder, one of the rituals of the hunt entailed cutting off the shirttail of a hunter who shot at and missed a deer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Larry McMurtry, Leaving Cheyenne: A Novel, page 131",
          "text": "She looked like the same old Molly, only more so, wearing Levis and an old cotton shirt with the shirttail out; she had a clothespin in her mouth and three or four more in the shirt pocket.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The single or split (then rather plural) bottom part of a shirt, below the waist, especially in the back, which, when not tucked into trousers or other vestment, hangs over the wearer's tail-end, like a tail."
      ],
      "id": "en-shirttail-en-noun-sz0HK9Nc",
      "links": [
        [
          "shirt",
          "shirt"
        ],
        [
          "tail-end",
          "tail-end"
        ]
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "86 1 0 1 12 0",
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "bottom part of shirt",
          "word": "hemdsslip"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "86 1 0 1 12 0",
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "bottom part of shirt",
          "word": "slip"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "86 1 0 1 12 0",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "bottom part of shirt",
          "word": "paidanhelma"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "39 23 1 1 3 33",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1977, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - Volume 53, page 60",
          "text": "There was something — did you ever catch hold of the shirttail of a dream and try to pull it back into your consciousness?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Ann Tatlock, A Room of My Own, page 195",
          "text": "Well, here we are, living in a city right on the shirttail of the city, and you're still not satisfied.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Donald Harman Akenson, An Irish history of civilization, page 397",
          "text": "James Orr joined Henry Joy McCracken and the shirttail of his force in the Slemish Mountains.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Holley Rubinsky, South of Elfrida",
          "text": "When she pulled herself out of it, she was no longer homely Doreen, acne pits ruining her face, but she was, as she jokes, hanging on to the shirttail of youth.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The tail-end or periphery of something."
      ],
      "id": "en-shirttail-en-noun-w5JtBn4s",
      "links": [
        [
          "periphery",
          "periphery"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension) The tail-end or periphery of something."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1939, Ohio State University. College of Commerce and Administration, College of Commerce conference series, page 68",
          "text": "Although consumers' cooperatives have not yet been benefitted, the more they become tied on to the shirttail of the agricultural bloc, the more political power they are going to have.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1984, Arizona Highways - Volume 60",
          "text": "And with the Papago Freeway tacked to the shirttail of a routine bond election, one of the great exercises of opinion-bending by an American newspaper went the full, furious distance. Nineteen seventy-three.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Mason C. Hoadley, The role of law in contemporary Indonesia",
          "text": "What has been changing is that introduction of Islamic forms of law have become less dependent upon riding the shirttail of local custom, which have been at least formally protected under Indonesia law.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A tenuous connection."
      ],
      "id": "en-shirttail-en-noun-1Y1XD0fU",
      "links": [
        [
          "tenuous",
          "tenuous"
        ],
        [
          "connection",
          "connection"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1977, William Ratigan, Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals, page 283",
          "text": "She belongs to the true sisterhood of the majestic five daughters born to America's inland Neptune, but she always has been regarded as a poor relation, a sort of shirttail cousin, by her big sisters.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1993, Dana Stabenow, A Fatal Thaw, page 141",
          "text": "I think we were related in a shirttail sort of way throuogh my father's family in Cordova.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Jeffrey Smith, Mischief Makers, page 16",
          "text": "As I mentioned earlier, my shirttail cousin Rod was a big part of my growing up years.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A distant kinship."
      ],
      "id": "en-shirttail-en-noun-f2d5ZNow",
      "links": [
        [
          "distant",
          "distant"
        ],
        [
          "kinship",
          "kinship"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1960, Guy Owen, Season of Fear, page 24",
          "text": "“What good's a one-horse farm, I ask you, a few acres of tobacco and a shirttail of corn and cotton—just enough to see a man through the winter and maybe buy seed to plant and get another run till the crops are in?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1974, Richard H. Cox, Truman G. Esau, Regressive therapy",
          "text": "Other times I felt that there was enough of the real P. with me that we were both hanging on to the shirttail of the real her to keep her from destroying herself and escaping and there was a well little girl there that was strong enough that at times she wanted as much as I wanted for that little girl to dominate and crush out the sick one.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1980, Torney Otto Nall, Builder of Bridges: A Biography of Roy Hunter Short, page 56",
          "text": "I may get a small shirttail of votes, but I don't expect to be elected.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A small portion"
      ],
      "id": "en-shirttail-en-noun-U~1Vv6FI",
      "links": [
        [
          "small",
          "small"
        ],
        [
          "portion",
          "portion"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "39 23 1 1 3 33",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1951, William Faulkner, “Two Soldiers”, in Collected Stories, page 84",
          "text": "He can't get no further behind. He can sholy take care of this little shirttail of a farm while me and you are whupping them Japanese.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1968, William Hewlette Walton, James Quillian Maxwell, The Life Story of Cousin Tubby Walton, page 2",
          "text": "Granddaddy Bill Hogan signed up with the Glorious Cause when he won't but a shirttail of a boy, just 16 years old, and he come within a tomcat's whisker of not coming out alive.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, John Yount, Hardcastle",
          "text": "Why don't you just go ahead and lay out fer me what the hell I've got to do on a little shirttail piece of land like this?",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something small and unimportant."
      ],
      "id": "en-shirttail-en-noun-lOQPMDid",
      "links": [
        [
          "unimportant",
          "unimportant"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0 0 0 0 0",
      "word": "shirt-tail"
    }
  ],
  "word": "shirttail"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English compound terms",
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
    "English lemmas",
    "English nouns",
    "en:Clothing"
  ],
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "straight shirttail"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "shirt",
        "3": "tail"
      },
      "expansion": "shirt + tail",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "shirt + tail",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "shirttails",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "shirttail (plural shirttails)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hypernyms": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "figuratively"
      ],
      "word": "tail"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "coattail"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1996, Christopher A. LaLonde, William Faulkner and the Rites of Passage, page 10",
          "text": "According to Linder, one of the rituals of the hunt entailed cutting off the shirttail of a hunter who shot at and missed a deer.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2010, Larry McMurtry, Leaving Cheyenne: A Novel, page 131",
          "text": "She looked like the same old Molly, only more so, wearing Levis and an old cotton shirt with the shirttail out; she had a clothespin in her mouth and three or four more in the shirt pocket.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The single or split (then rather plural) bottom part of a shirt, below the waist, especially in the back, which, when not tucked into trousers or other vestment, hangs over the wearer's tail-end, like a tail."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "shirt",
          "shirt"
        ],
        [
          "tail-end",
          "tail-end"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1977, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - Volume 53, page 60",
          "text": "There was something — did you ever catch hold of the shirttail of a dream and try to pull it back into your consciousness?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1998, Ann Tatlock, A Room of My Own, page 195",
          "text": "Well, here we are, living in a city right on the shirttail of the city, and you're still not satisfied.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005, Donald Harman Akenson, An Irish history of civilization, page 397",
          "text": "James Orr joined Henry Joy McCracken and the shirttail of his force in the Slemish Mountains.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2013, Holley Rubinsky, South of Elfrida",
          "text": "When she pulled herself out of it, she was no longer homely Doreen, acne pits ruining her face, but she was, as she jokes, hanging on to the shirttail of youth.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The tail-end or periphery of something."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "periphery",
          "periphery"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension) The tail-end or periphery of something."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1939, Ohio State University. College of Commerce and Administration, College of Commerce conference series, page 68",
          "text": "Although consumers' cooperatives have not yet been benefitted, the more they become tied on to the shirttail of the agricultural bloc, the more political power they are going to have.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1984, Arizona Highways - Volume 60",
          "text": "And with the Papago Freeway tacked to the shirttail of a routine bond election, one of the great exercises of opinion-bending by an American newspaper went the full, furious distance. Nineteen seventy-three.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004, Mason C. Hoadley, The role of law in contemporary Indonesia",
          "text": "What has been changing is that introduction of Islamic forms of law have become less dependent upon riding the shirttail of local custom, which have been at least formally protected under Indonesia law.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A tenuous connection."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "tenuous",
          "tenuous"
        ],
        [
          "connection",
          "connection"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1977, William Ratigan, Great Lakes Shipwrecks & Survivals, page 283",
          "text": "She belongs to the true sisterhood of the majestic five daughters born to America's inland Neptune, but she always has been regarded as a poor relation, a sort of shirttail cousin, by her big sisters.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1993, Dana Stabenow, A Fatal Thaw, page 141",
          "text": "I think we were related in a shirttail sort of way throuogh my father's family in Cordova.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Jeffrey Smith, Mischief Makers, page 16",
          "text": "As I mentioned earlier, my shirttail cousin Rod was a big part of my growing up years.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A distant kinship."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "distant",
          "distant"
        ],
        [
          "kinship",
          "kinship"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1960, Guy Owen, Season of Fear, page 24",
          "text": "“What good's a one-horse farm, I ask you, a few acres of tobacco and a shirttail of corn and cotton—just enough to see a man through the winter and maybe buy seed to plant and get another run till the crops are in?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1974, Richard H. Cox, Truman G. Esau, Regressive therapy",
          "text": "Other times I felt that there was enough of the real P. with me that we were both hanging on to the shirttail of the real her to keep her from destroying herself and escaping and there was a well little girl there that was strong enough that at times she wanted as much as I wanted for that little girl to dominate and crush out the sick one.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1980, Torney Otto Nall, Builder of Bridges: A Biography of Roy Hunter Short, page 56",
          "text": "I may get a small shirttail of votes, but I don't expect to be elected.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A small portion"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "small",
          "small"
        ],
        [
          "portion",
          "portion"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1951, William Faulkner, “Two Soldiers”, in Collected Stories, page 84",
          "text": "He can't get no further behind. He can sholy take care of this little shirttail of a farm while me and you are whupping them Japanese.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1968, William Hewlette Walton, James Quillian Maxwell, The Life Story of Cousin Tubby Walton, page 2",
          "text": "Granddaddy Bill Hogan signed up with the Glorious Cause when he won't but a shirttail of a boy, just 16 years old, and he come within a tomcat's whisker of not coming out alive.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, John Yount, Hardcastle",
          "text": "Why don't you just go ahead and lay out fer me what the hell I've got to do on a little shirttail piece of land like this?",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something small and unimportant."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "unimportant",
          "unimportant"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "shirt-tail"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "bottom part of shirt",
      "word": "hemdsslip"
    },
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "bottom part of shirt",
      "word": "slip"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "bottom part of shirt",
      "word": "paidanhelma"
    }
  ],
  "word": "shirttail"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.