Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In a back-action steam-engine, the crosspiece which connects the side-bars at the opposite end from the cross-head. The connecting-rod in such engines reaches from the cross-tail to the crank.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Steam Engine) A bar connecting the ends of the side rods or levers of a backaction or side-lever engine.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A bar in a steam engine connecting the ends of the side rods or levers of a backaction or side-lever engine.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • She recently broke her shaft and her cross-tail, and had to put into Charleston.

    Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post Thomas Rainey

  • Here, too, was raw material organized: a fly-wheel, large enough to keep the knobbiest of asteroids revolving without a wabble; a cross-head, cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea-going steamer breast the waves; a light walking-beam, to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the river; and other members of machines, only asking to be put together and vivified by steam and they would go at their work with a will.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 Various

  • You wasn't always spyin 'to see we didn't take home a cross-tail or a hundred-weight of cast-iron in our pants' pockets, or go to swiggin 'hot metal out of the ladles on the sly. "

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 Various

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