tailwater
noun
tailwater is a noun meaning “The water located immediately downstream from a hydraulic structure, such as a dam, bridge, or culvert” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-A-I-L-W-A-T-E-R, and it appears about once in every 72 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of tailwater is tailwaters.
What does tailwater mean?
noun
- 1
The water located immediately downstream from a hydraulic structure, such as a dam, bridge, or culvert.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of tailwater
- tailwaters plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is tailwater?
Tailwater appears about once in every 72 million words in written English, the 269,040th 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).
Where does tailwater come from?
From tail + water.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).