white tail
1
3.0
- noun
- /ˈwaɪt teɪl/
- US
:
ciervo de cola blanca
- You remind yourself to look for pieces of a deer: a black snout, a white tail, a wave of muscle beneath a grayish-brown coat, or the tine of an antler.
- white tail deer
Examples
-
When I spotted the white tail of a deer in the tall grass, I knew it was time to be still and quiet.
-
But her whole body was quivering with fear, and when I moved, she turned so fast I only glimpsed her white tail disappearing.
Fiction book (2001) -
She galloped to the ditch and sailed over it, clearing with two feet to spare, her white tail high as a flag.
Fiction book (2002) -
It didn't move, just stood there, sniffing the soft morning air, its thick white tail swishing.
Fiction book (1994) -
A buck deer, flashing a white tail like a flag, burst from a thicket, and Morgan stifled the urge to cry out to those ahead.
Fiction book (1994) -
To me, hunting seems more about thrill than kill, about appreciating life in acknowledgment of death and thereby living with a rare acuteness, even if only for the amount of time it takes a doe to flick her white tail.
Blog text (8) -
As the white-tailed deer dashed through the forest, its white tail flicked up, revealing the bright underside.
-
In the quiet dawn, I saw a white tail dart away as the deer sensed my presence and fled into the woods.
Synonyms
5
3.7
A North American deer with a white underside to its tail that it shows when scared
2
2.8
A North American deer with a white underside to its tail that it raises when scared
1
2.4
A North American deer with a white tail that lifts when it is scared
A common North American deer with a white underside to its tail
A common North American deer with white under its tail
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward adjective + noun combination: 'white' (color) + 'tail' (rear appendage), so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand it as a tail that is white or an entity named for having a white tail (as in white-tailed deer). There is no idiomatic shift or metaphorical meaning here and the descriptive pattern is cross-linguistically common, so the meaning is directly derivable from the constituents.
Etymology
White tail comes from a simple image: the bottom of a deer's tail is white, and the deer often flashes this white patch when it runs. Because of that clear mark, people called the animal white tail, so the name now means 'white-tailed deer'.