tailwheel
noun
tailwheel is a noun meaning “A wheel attached to the tail of an aircraft that supports it when on the ground” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-A-I-L-W-H-E-E-L, and it appears about once in every 38 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of tailwheel is tailwheels.
What does tailwheel mean?
noun
- 1
A wheel attached to the tail of an aircraft that supports it when on the ground.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of tailwheel
- tailwheels plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is tailwheel?
Tailwheel appears about once in every 38 million words in written English, the 189,524th 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).
Tailwheel in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense wheel attached to the tail of an aircraft:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | Spornrad |
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 tailwheel come from?
From tail + wheel.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).