Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A long, thin length of hair that hangs down the nape of the neck, usually when the rest of the hair is cut short.
  • adjective Shaped like or having a part shaped like a rat's tail.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fish of the genus Macrurus, as M. fabricii or M. rupestris; the onion-fish or grenadier. See cut under Macrurus.
  • noun A horse which has a tail bare or nearly bared of hair.
  • noun One of various plants having tail-like flower-spikes, as the common plantain and the ribwort plantain, and various grasses, including species of Rottbœllia in the United States and Ischæmum laxum (Andropogon nervosus) in Australia.
  • noun In farriery:
  • noun An excrescence on a horse's leg, growing from the pastern to the shank.
  • noun A disease which causes the hair of a horse's tail to fall off; also, a horse's tail thus denuded of hair. Also rat's-tail.
  • Same as rat-tailed.

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

  • noun (Far.) An excrescence growing from the pastern to the middle of the shank of a horse.
  • noun The California chimæra. See Chimæra.
  • noun Any fish of the genus Macrurus. See Grenadier, 2.
  • adjective Like a rat's tail in form. See Illust. of file.

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

  • noun slang A towel that has been tightly twisted along the diagonal to make a rudimentary whip with a towel corner at the tip, typically used in juvenile pranks.
  • noun An excrescence growing from the pastern to the middle of the shank of a horse.
  • noun A fish, the California chimera, Hydrolagus colliei, syn. Chimaera colliei.
  • noun Any fish of the genus Macrurus; a grenadier.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun deep-sea fish with a large head and body and long tapering tail

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