Tailswing

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    When turning a heavy vehicle, the movement of the rear portion of the vehicle in the opposite direction from the direction the front end turns.

    "The authorities provided the boats, and Smalley mounted machines on them that could dredge and clear weed, working in shallow waterways under low, narrow bridges, unhindered by a counterweight tailswing."

Example

More examples

"The authorities provided the boats, and Smalley mounted machines on them that could dredge and clear weed, working in shallow waterways under low, narrow bridges, unhindered by a counterweight tailswing."

Etymology

From tail + swing.

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