springtail
noun
springtail is a noun meaning “Any of various wingless hexapods, of the subclass Collembola, with spring-like legs” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-P-R-I-N-G-T-A-I-L, and it appears about once in every 95 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of springtail is springtails.
What does springtail mean?
noun
- 1
Any of various wingless hexapods, of the subclass Collembola, with spring-like legs.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of springtail
- springtails plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is springtail?
Springtail appears about once in every 95 million words in written English, the 313,259th 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).
Springtail in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense springtail:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | collembole |
| German | Springschwanz |
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 springtail come from?
From spring + tail.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).