tailgate
1the board or gate at the back of a wagon, truck, station wagon, etc., which can be removed or let down for convenience in loading or unloading.
to follow or drive hazardously close to the rear of another vehicle.
to follow or drive hazardously close to the rear of (another vehicle).
pertaining to or set up on a tailgate: a tailgate picnic before the football game.
Origin of tailgate
1Words Nearby tailgate
Other definitions for tailgate (2 of 2)
a style of playing the trombone, especially in Dixieland jazz, distinguished especially by the use of melodic counterpoint and long glissandi.
Origin of tailgate
2Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use tailgate in a sentence
There’s even a clever slide-out tailgate you can use as a table.
He would arrive at Hammer’s Lot about 24 hours before kickoff to tailgate with longtime and yet-to-be-made friends.
‘Bills Mafia’ waited a generation for a team like this. It’s had to embrace it from afar. | Adam Kilgore | January 7, 2021 | Washington PostWithin the confined universe of the NFL, few places felt the impact more vividly than the tailgate lots in Orchard Park.
‘Bills Mafia’ waited a generation for a team like this. It’s had to embrace it from afar. | Adam Kilgore | January 7, 2021 | Washington PostThe administration prohibited tailgating at football games and limited most university events to a maximum of 20 people.
Two very different colleges share how they kept COVID-19 off campus | Tara Santora | December 4, 2020 | Popular-ScienceDean McQuiddy, a 1983 Florida graduate who has missed this game only once since he began college, will tailgate at Adams Street Station, then watch from a stadium suite.
The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party has met a sobering reality: A pandemic | Emily Giambalvo | November 5, 2020 | Washington Post
Except for the unhappy expressions on their faces, they looked like they had settled in for a tailgate party.
A number of adults at the tailgate Party are wearing orange T-shirts printed with the words “See You at the Pole Event Staff.”
See You at the Pole: Church Youth Gatherings Raise Legal Questions | Katherine Stewart | January 26, 2012 | THE DAILY BEASTThe truck was decades old, and it lacked a tailgate so the people in back were crammed together to avoid falling out.
Adam Johnson Recalls North Korea: A Country with No Books | Adam Johnson | December 22, 2011 | THE DAILY BEASTOur cars will chide us if we tailgate and watch us as we drive and jolt us awake if are distracted or drifting off to sleep.
There was a tailgate lowered, forming a ramp; above it, the huge double doors opened on a cavern of blackness.
Security | Poul William AndersonOn the tailgate was spread, three times a day, the jolly good meals that pioneer mothers knew how to cook.
Strange Stories of the Great Valley | Abbie Johnston GrosvenorThe hounds were snapping furiously as they tried to leap over the tailgate.
Collectivum | Mike Lewis
British Dictionary definitions for tailgate (1 of 2)
/ (ˈteɪlˌɡeɪt) /
another name for tailboard
a door at the rear of a hatchback vehicle
to drive very close behind (a vehicle)
Derived forms of tailgate
- tailgater, noun
British Dictionary definitions for tail gate (2 of 2)
a gate that is used to control the flow of water at the lower end of a lock: Compare head gate
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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