Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The current of water leaving a mill-wheel after turning it, or the channel through which it runs; a tail-race.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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"His questions and his tongue run like a mill-tail."
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` ` His questions and his tongue run like a mill-tail. ''
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Before the last troop of dragoons rode off they were welcomed in a body by Miller Loveday, who still stood in his outer garden, this being a plot lying below the mill-tail, and stretching to the water-side.
The Trumpet-Major Thomas Hardy 1884
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She ran and dipped her handkerchief into the splashing mill-tail, and with it damped
The Trumpet-Major Thomas Hardy 1884
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Bob rose next morning as early as his father and the grinder, and, when the big wheel began to patter and the little ones to mumble in response, went to sun himself outside the mill-front, among the fowls of brown and speckled kinds which haunted that spot, and the ducks that came up from the mill-tail.
The Trumpet-Major Thomas Hardy 1884
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Every little rill and springlet ran like a mill-tail, while the main stream rushed and roared, foaming, leaping, lashing, its volume increased fifty-fold.
In the Catskills Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs John Burroughs 1879
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The ship was new and good -- a pretty craft; she sat like a duck upon the water, and a stiff breeze carried her along the surface of the waves without your rocking, and pitching, and tossing, like an old wash-tub at a mill-tail, as I have had the misfortune to sail in more than once afore.
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I warrant me that the sap runs like a mill-tail up the maples, this warm morning.
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We had had no observations for several days, and had been moving about by dead reckoning, in a part of the ocean where the tides run like a mill-tail, with the wind blowing a little hurricane.
Afloat and Ashore A Sea Tale James Fenimore Cooper 1820
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The tide ran like a mill-tail, and it was, perhaps, lucky for us that there was no time for reflection or irresolution; the aspect of things being so serious as might well have thrown the most decided man into uncertainty and doubt.
Miles Wallingford Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" James Fenimore Cooper 1820
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