rooster tail

noun

1. the wake thrown up behind a speeding boat or the dust thrown up behind a speeding vehicle.

Word History and Origins

Origin of rooster tail¹

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

A speedboat trails “a rooster tail of foamy wake.”

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They kicked up a rooster tail of steam that made it almost impossible for Jason to see where they were going.

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Byron and Logano said the visibility was next to zero on the track’s two high-speed straights because of the rooster tail of spray spit out by the cars ahead.

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And when the X-15 came back to earth, it landed with a nose wheel and rear skids that left a rooster tail of dust on the dry lake bed strip before it came to a top.

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Instead, the initial blowout formed a “rooster tail,” a gigantic jet of molten material, which exited the atmosphere, some of it fanning out over North America.

Read more on The New Yorker