Definitions
Etymologies
- Refers to behavior of fleeing animals, such as deer, that raise their tail when running away. (Wiktionary)
- From those animals that raise their tails when fleeing. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“If Mrs. Sanford has a a shred of dignity left and if she really cares most about her role i.e. role model to her sons, she'll read that besotted fool's self-absorbed drivel and hightail-it straight to her attorney's office!”
“Adrenaline snaked through my limbs, urging me to bolt, to hightail it out of Rocquemore House and never look back.”
“When he then tried to get management actually to make a plan, even calling on Oscar to speak truth to this perceived power, no one went for it, and Michael was left only with the option to call them names and hightail it back to the comped limo.”
“Dont say nuke too many times Big John will hightail it u nder the bed.”
“On some nights I could hear my eggs plotting and whispering in tiny cartoon voices, packing up their bags in preparation to hightail it out of there.”
“When she was too insecure to come out of her dressing room on some mornings, Jane would hightail it over there and tell her to get moving -- the crew was waiting.”
The Huffington Post: Danny Miller: Jane Russell, Right-Wing Republican and Good Ol' Gal (1921-2011)
“Now that I think on it, if it does happen to be full of beer, we could have a quick draught before we hightail it away.”
“But an alert from Outlook reminded me that I had one hour to grab the cute uncomfortable shoes I stow under my desk and hightail it downtown.”
The Wall Street Journal: Technology: My Marriage's Secret Glue
“Double-quick dare-dare, I ditch Nefertiti — and any other newfangled notions about nursing time — and hightail my hide back to the coffee machine in time to make my husband his café with cream.”
“So I wanted to hightail it out of Omaha as fast as I could and the only way to get out of Omaha at the time was to be accepted into some sort of critical job for which there was some acute personnel shortage because no one wanted the job.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘hightail’.
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-ight
light, night, wight, hight, knight, fight, bright, right, fright, bight, eight, might and 174 more...
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Hi, you!
Words that sound like you're saying hi to a person.
hijack, hygiene, heighdy, hi-fi, hijinks, hiyacinth, hymen, highway, hiyalin, highfalutin, highbrow, hilo and 37 more...
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some words
phatic, macerate, amanuenses, theophagy, seraglio, gloaming, geophagy, metaphone, anastrophe, neologism, tetragrammaton, bête noire and 568 more...
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Idioms or Phrases or "expressions"
like nobody's bui..., soap up, plug away, country club, horse whisperer, cease and desist, eye of the beholder, small-claims court, nut job, heebie-jeebies, hole in the wall, black-tie and 101 more...
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do the locomotion
Ways of walking, running, skipping, etc. Not included: assisted locomotion (riding, driving, boating). These verbs should more or less fit the paradigm: She _______ (her way) into/out of/through/ar...
stagger, stumble, dart, dash, run, walk, mince, sashay, strut, stride, move, go and 108 more...
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Manners of Moving
amble, stroll, stride, saunter, parade, toddle, scamper, clamber, slink, scuff, slip, skitter and 29 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for hightail.
oroboros Cf. nip and tuck. Dec 26, 2009
reesetee And a bonus: thanks to John, I'm adding "hightail it home" to my Mom list. :-) Oct 30, 2007
chained_bear Yes, that's true! The other animal that was used as an example in whatever the hell it was I was reading about the white-tailed deer, was a mourning dove. They have white streaks on their tail feathers, which, when the birds are startled, spread to make the white highly visible. Oct 29, 2007
reesetee That's also a sign of danger in the bird world. Birdwatchers are warned not to wear white in the field so as not to scare away all the good birds. Oct 29, 2007
chained_bear Interestingly, about white-tail deer anyways, it is thought that they evolved white undersides on their tails to function as a warning flag to other deer.
If you're a deer, and you see that white tail, you know the other deer is fleeing something and you ought to consider doing the same. Something like that.
I always thought that was a pretty cool evolutionary tool.
It reminds me of that Gary Larson cartoon of a deer with a target on its chest: "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal." Oct 29, 2007
john Slang for running away quickly. I presume it comes from the fact that deer hold their tails straight up when they bolt. Oct 29, 2007