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fantail

/ˈfænˌteɪl/noun

fantail is a noun meaning “Any of several birds, of the genus Rhipidura, from Asia, Australia and New Zealand” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-N-T-A-I-L and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 14 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fantail is fantails.

What does fantail mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Any of several birds, of the genus Rhipidura, from Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

  2. 2

    Any of several domestic varieties of pigeon having a fan-shaped tail.

  3. 3

    Any of several goldfish having a large fan-shaped tail.

  4. 4

    An overhanging deck at the stern of a ship.

  5. 5

    A small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill, used to turn the cap automatically to bring it into the wind.

  6. 6

    A brimmed hat with just the back of the brim turned up.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce fantail?

  • US /ˈfænˌteɪl/

Fantail has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of fantail

  • fantails plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is fantail?

Fantail appears about once in every 14 million words in written English, the 113,022nd most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Fantail in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense bird of the genus Rhipidura:

LanguageWords
GermanFächerschwanz

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does fantail come from?

From fan + tail. The sense of Rhipidura-genus birds is a calque of translingual Rhipidura.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).