turn tail

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

turn tail (third-person singular simple present turns tail, present participle turning tail, simple past and past participle turned tail)

1. (idiomatic) To turn away from someone or something, in preparation for running away; to reverse direction; to leave or flee.
   • 1838, Charles Dickens, “Some Particulars Concerning A Lion”, in Mudfog and Other Sketches:

     A box-lobby lion or a Regent-street animal . . . will never bite, and, if you offer to attack him manfully, will fairly turn tail and sneak off.

   • 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of Corrynakiegh”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 202:

     [H]e stormed at me all through the lessons in a very violent manner of scolding, [...] I was often tempted to turn tail, but held my ground for all that, and got some profit of my lessons; [...]

   • 1911 June, Jack London, “Cruising in the Solomons”, in The Cruise of the Snark, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC, page 279:

     Morning found us still vainly toiling through the passage. At last, in despair, we turned tail, ran out to sea, and sailed clear round Bassakanna to our objective, Malu.

   • 1945 April 3, Bruce Rae, “Okinawa: The Marines Have Landed”, in New York Times, page 1:

     Five of the enemy planes were shot down and the remainder turned tail.

   • 2011 April 27, Vivienne Walt, “Have Fuel, Will Fight”, in Time:

     The men blew up two oil pipelines in eastern Libya near the rebel-held Sarir fields, before turning tail and speeding back west.

• Often used to suggest fearfulness, cowardliness, or unwillingness to face a challenge or a responsibility.

• rutilant