Coat-trailing
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A disingenuous act or arrangement intended to provoke a desired response. UK, countable, uncountable
"The Peshawar agent will often be an ambitious man "in a hurry," in which case he will push the forward policy, and amongst future Viceroys Aucklands, Lyttons, Lansdownes, and Elgins will be more frequent than Lawrences and Curzons, and then we shall have complications, coat-trailings, warlike movements, perhaps even wars, and they mean, as was the case through the 'nineties, extravagance trans-Indus, and crippling retrenchments or tax enhancements cis-Indus."
Example
More examples"The Peshawar agent will often be an ambitious man "in a hurry," in which case he will push the forward policy, and amongst future Viceroys Aucklands, Lyttons, Lansdownes, and Elgins will be more frequent than Lawrences and Curzons, and then we shall have complications, coat-trailings, warlike movements, perhaps even wars, and they mean, as was the case through the 'nineties, extravagance trans-Indus, and crippling retrenchments or tax enhancements cis-Indus."
Etymology
From the idea of deliberately trailing one's coat on the ground to entice another to step on it.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.