tail between one's legs

See also: tail-between-one's-legs

English

Etymology

From the body posture of a dog that is worried or frightened.

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Adverb

tail between one's legs (not comparable)

1. Defeated; in a cowardly or miserable manner.

   He came back home, tail between his legs.

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XV, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers by arrangement with George H. Doran Company, OCLC 365836:

     "I wouldn't do that," said Mrs. MacAndrew. "I'd give him all the rope he wants. He'll come back with his tail between his legs and settle down again quite comfortably."

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically.
   • 1591, William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act V, scene i], page 144:

     Oft haue I ſeene a hot ore-weening Curre / Run backe and bite, becauſe he was with-held, / Who being ſuffer'd with the Beares fell paw, / Hath clapt his taile, between his legges and cride,

Translations

defeated; in a cowardly or miserable manner

• Dutch: de staart tussen de benen
• Finnish: häntä koipien välissä
• French: la queue entre les jambes (fr)
• Polish: z uszami spuszczonymi po sobie, z podwiniętym ogonem
• Russian: поджа́в хвост (podžáv xvost)

• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: подвити реп, подвијеног репа

  Roman: podviti rep, podvijenog repa

• Spanish: con la cola entre las piernas

Noun

tail between one's legs (uncountable)

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   • 2013, Alistair Moffat, Susan Mansfield, Alexander Smith, The Great Tapestry of Scotland: The Making of a Masterpiece:

     That whole campaign was a damp squib, they cranked it up as a real possibility that Scotland might win, and when we actually got there it didn't happen like that, and everybody came home quite early with their tails between their legs.

   He retreated from the fight with his tail between his legs.

Further reading

• “with your tail between your legs” (US) / “with your tail between your legs” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
• “tail between one's legs”, in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary.
• “with one's tail between one's legs”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.