Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A coat with tails; specifically, a coat with a divided skirt cut away in front, like a dress-coat, or the so-called swallow-tailed coat.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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AzuraTheBlueDevil didn't think so: "I turned up for the school run in a tail-coat and knee-highbuckle-up pirate boots the otherday."
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I changed my tail-coat for my jacket, but I did not take off the necktie.
First Love 2006
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A few moments later the enormous door creaked open, and Charlotte found herself staring at a man in a tail-coat, with stark white skin and no face at all.
The Shadow Thieves Anne Ursu 2006
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A few moments later the enormous door creaked open, and Charlotte found herself staring at a man in a tail-coat, with stark white skin and no face at all.
The Shadow Thieves Anne Ursu 2006
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A few moments later the enormous door creaked open, and Charlotte found herself staring at a man in a tail-coat, with stark white skin and no face at all.
The Shadow Thieves Anne Ursu 2006
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Old Dobbin, his father, who now respected him for the first time, gave him two guineas publicly; most of which he spent in a general tuck-out for the school: and he came back in a tail-coat after the holidays.
Vanity Fair 2006
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He does not assume the tail-coat and the manners of manhood too early: he holds his tongue, and listens to his elders: his mind blushes as well as his cheeks: he does not know how to make bows and pay compliments like the young Frenchman: nor to contradict his seniors as I am informed
The Newcomes 2006
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Before dinner-time I pomaded myself once more, and once more put on my tail-coat and necktie.
First Love 2006
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In part it was a modest cancan, in part a step dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original.
The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells Herbert George 2006
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Something unusual proclaimed itself in my tail-coat pocket, and I felt and discovered a glass ball.
Twelve Stories and a Dream, by H. G. Wells Herbert George 2006
bilby commented on the word tail-coat
"Colonel Grangerford was a gentleman you see. He was a gentleman all over...His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sunday he wore a blue tail-coat and brass buttons on it...There weren't no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he weren't never loud."
- Mark Twain, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'.
October 17, 2008