noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   An inexperienced person, especially a newly-commissioned military officer. US

   "Yass. I never got above the rank of shavetail. We were the dogfaces who gave ’em hell at Chateau Thierry."

Synonyms

All synonyms

aidebrassbrigadiercaptaincolonelcommandant

Example

More examples

"Yass. I never got above the rank of shavetail. We were the dogfaces who gave ’em hell at Chateau Thierry."

Etymology

From shave + tail.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.