Fishtail
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The tail of a fish, or an object resembling this.
- 2 The skidding of the back of a vehicle from side to side.
- 3 A kind of chisel with a flared blade.
- 4 Ellipsis of fishtail palm. abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis
- 1 To swing the back of a vehicle (originally an aircraft) from side to side. intransitive
"As we approached the runway, the pilot fishtailed slightly to reduce landing speed."
- 2 slow down by moving the tail sideways wordnet
- 3 To cause the back of (a vehicle) to swing from side to side. transitive
"But Bruce wasn't done baiting the jocks. He fishtailed the car; it swerved and reversed direction, heading straight for the three jocks who were chasing them on foot. It looked like he was going to run the car over the three men."
- 4 To move with the tail swinging from side to side in this way. intransitive
"A large black and gold butterfly fish-tailed in and landed on a hydrangea bush almost at my elbow, moved its wings slowly up and down a few times, then took off heavily […]"
Example
More examples"As we approached the runway, the pilot fishtailed slightly to reduce landing speed."
Etymology
From Middle English fisch tayle, equivalent to fish + tail.
Related phrases
More for "fishtail"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.