Coattail
Definition, Meaning & Examples
Part of speech noun
Quick meaning: Coattail is a noun meaning The flap at the back of a coat that hangs down, sometimes below the waist.
Meaning
The flap at the back of a coat that hangs down, sometimes below the waist.
More Meanings
- (usually in the plural, figurative) Success of a figure, organization or movement that transfers to those who associate with it.
- (ambitransitive) To ride the coattails of.
Example Sentences
to ride the coattails
Mr Obama’s coat-tails may help lift Wall-Street-basher Elizabeth Warren past pickup-driving Everyman and one-time nude pin-up Scott Brown in Massachusetts[…].
And Harford grabs the coattails of the trend, giving us 10 rules for thinking differently about numbers in the news, ranging from “check your feelings”, to “ponder your personal experience”, to “keep an open mind”.
It wasn't like I just coattailed the auditor's work. Based on the names on the time cards, I was able to conduct interviews with the employees whose labor was mischarged, and they told me which contracts they had actually worked on.
Word Forms
- coattails
- coat-tail
- coattailing
- coattailed
Related Words
Related dictionary entries include coat-tail, tailcoat, coatee, longcoat, tail, tails.
Related Dictionary Tools
Sources & Attribution
FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0
Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.