tail

«tail» in Mova's school dictionary: The part at the back end of an animal's body that sticks… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a tail, tails); verb (tail, tails, tailed — to follow secretly)

meaning for a pupil

1) The part at the back end of an animal's body that sticks out and can often move. tree →

2) The back part of something: the tail of a plane, the tail of a comet. tree →

3) Tails: the side of a coin without the head picture. tree →

4) Verb: to follow someone closely and secretly. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science: animals use tails to balance (cats, squirrels), swim (fish), steer (birds), swat flies (cows, horses), hold on (monkeys), store fat; lizards can drop their tails to escape. In animal safety: a wagging tail does not always mean a dog is friendly; don't pull animals' tails. In maths and probability: heads or tails when you flip a coin — each has a one-in-two chance. Phrases: wag its tail, heads or tails, tail end, tail of a comet, tadpole tail.

examples

• The dog wagged its tail. tree →
• A cat uses its tail to balance. tree →
• Heads or tails? tree →
• A lizard can drop its tail to escape. tree →
• Never pull an animal's tail. tree →
• We sat at the tail of the plane. tree →
• The comet had a long bright tail. tree →
• Tadpoles lose their tails as they turn into frogs. tree →
• RABBIT LOST HIS FINE BUSHY TAIL tree →

note

Countable: tails. Homophone: «tale» (a story) — «a tail» is on an animal, «a tale» is told. In probability: a fair coin lands on tails about half the time — but each flip is new, so tails is not «due» after many heads.

In the corpora

• A loose wide tail wag usually means a happy dog, but a stiff high wag can mean the dog is tense.
• The bombardier beetle mixes two chemicals in its body to make a spray of about 100 degrees that it shoots from its tail end.
• Tadpoles hatch after about 1 to 3 weeks, breathe with gills and swim with a tail, and grow faster in warmer water.
• Like all apes, orangutans, gibbons and bonobos have no tails.
• Ring-tailed lemurs sunbathe in the morning to warm up, and wild lemurs live only on Madagascar.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «tail» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.