coattail

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From coat +‎ tail.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

coattail (plural coattails)

  1. The flap at the back of a coat that hangs down, sometimes below the waist.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, chapter II, in The Ivory Gate , New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, , →OCLC:
      At twilight in the summer […] the mice come out. They […] eat the luncheon crumbs. Mr. Checkly, for instance, always brought his dinner in a paper parcel in his coat-tail pocket, and ate it when so disposed, sprinkling crumbs lavishly […] on the floor.
  2. (usually in the plural, figurative) Success of a figure, organization or movement that transfers to those who associate with it.
    • 2012 October 6, “The Senate: Not so flippable”, in The Economist‎:
      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 […].
    • 2020 November 17, Ben Chu, “Review: How to Make the World Add Up, by Tim Harford”, in The Independent‎, retrieved 2021-01-13:
      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”.

Hypernyms

Translations

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Verb

coattail (third-person singular simple present coattails, present participle coattailing, simple past and past participle coattailed)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To ride the coattails of.
    • 2014, Charles E. Piper, Investigator and Fraud Fighter Guidebook: Operation War Stories, page 139:
      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.
    • 2018, Curtis P. Haugtvedt, Paul M. Herr, Frank R. Kardes, Handbook of Consumer Psychology:
      The first of these is what Holt calls coat-tailing on cultural epicenters. Through coat-tailing, the brand becomes part of a social movement or emergent meaning-making sub-culture such that it stands as a vested community member […]

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