a.
1. Having a long tail.
1500–20. Dunbar, Poems, xxxii. 17. Ane lang taild beist and grit with all.
1567. Gude & Godlie Ball. (S.T.S.), 202. Thair lang taillit gowne.
1718. Prior, Solomon, I. 178. The crested snake, and long-tailed crocodile.
1859. Geo. Eliot, A. Bede, v. The striped waistcoat, long-tailed coat, and low top-boots.
1896. Peterson Mag., Jan., 62/1. I shall have it printed in the old-fashioned way, long-tailed s and all.
1897. Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, 198. Long-tailed Adooma canoes.
b. spec. in names of animals.
1752. Sir J. Hill, Hist. Animals, 544. The long-tailed Felis, with pencilled ears.
1766. Pennant, Zool. (1776), II. 507. Long tailed Duck.
1774. G. White, Selborne, xli. 106. The delicate long-tailed titmouse.
1831. A. Wilson & Bonaparte, Amer. Ornith., III. 233. Anas glacialis … Long-tailed duck.
1868. Wood, Homes without H., xiii. 232. Long-tailed Humming Bird (Trochilus polytmus).
1899. Westm. Gaz., 13 Sept., 1/3. Another beautiful butterfly—the long-tailed blue.
2. Of words: Having a long termination. † Also applied to a long-winded speech. jocular.
1549. Compl. Scot., Prol. 16. Thir lang tailit vordis, conturbabuntur,… innumerabilibus.
a. 1670. Spalding, Troub. Chas. I. (Spalding Club, 1851), II. 262. It is said this long taillit supplicatioun wes weill hard of by the bretheren of the general assembly.
1767. A. Campbell, Lexiph. (1774), 87. Hard long-tailed words drawn from the Greek and Latin languages.
1817. J. H. Frere, K. Arthur, I. vi. With long-tailed words in osity and ation.
1854. Mrs. M. Holmes, Tempest & Sunshine, 20. She was so heartily tired of its ‘long-tailed verbs,’ as she called them, that she had thrown her grammar out of the window, and afterwards given it to Aunt Judy to light the oven with!
1902. Pall Mall Gaz., 4 Jan., 6/3. Would not the combination—Demont-Breton-Worms-Baretta—be a little long-tailed, say, for a visiting card?
