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rattail

/ˈɹæt.teɪl/noun

rattail is a noun meaning “Any of the large dark-colored deep-sea fish of the Macrouridae family of ray-finned fish” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled R-A-T-T-A-I-L, and it appears about once in every 31 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of rattail is rattails.

What does rattail mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Any of the large dark-colored deep-sea fish of the Macrouridae family of ray-finned fish.

  2. 2

    A fish, a California chimera (Hydrolagus colliei, syn. Chimaera colliei).

  3. 3

    A hairstyle characterized by a long lock of tail-like hair dangling from the back of the head; the dangling lock itself.

  4. 4

    A type of file (cutting tool) with a round cross section and usually also a taper toward the distal end.

  5. 5

    slangA towel that has been tightly twisted along the diagonal to make a rudimentary whip with a towel corner at the tip, typically used in juvenile pranks.

  6. 6

    An excrescence growing from the pastern to the middle of the shank of a horse.

  7. 7

    The flowering plant Stachytarpheta cayennensis.

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

How do you pronounce rattail?

  • /ˈɹæt.teɪl/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-rattail.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of rattail

  • rattails plural
  • rat-tail

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

How common is rattail?

Rattail appears about once in every 31 million words in written English, the 169,822nd 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).

Rattail in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchqueue de rat, grenadier (fish), queue-de-rat (hair)
GermanRattenschwanz, Grenadierfische (fish)
Spanishcola de rata, granadero (fish)

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 rattail come from?

From rat + tail: all of the nonliteral senses come from something else's fancied resemblance to the tail of a rat.

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