tailrace
Americannoun
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the race, flume, or channel leading away from a waterwheel or the like.
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Mining. the channel for conducting tailings or refuse away in water.
noun
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a channel that carries water away from a water wheel, turbine, etc Compare headrace
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mining the channel for removing tailings in water
Etymology
Origin of tailrace
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Soon Marshall’s tailrace was universally acknowledged to be the doorway to the Mother Lode, “a snakelike vein of quartz-encapsulated gold that extended for more than 150 miles along the western edge” of the Sierra Nevada.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
The mill would be water-powered, so it needed a tailrace, a shallow ditch to return the water to the river after it had given its push to the wheel.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026
The John Day dam is the worst, with on average 65 days each summer in which the river exceeds 68 degrees, measured in waters just below the dam, known as the tailrace.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 31, 2019
It sits astride the Columbia River, which loses as much as 70 feet of elevation as it falls through the building’s turbines and emerges, almost glass-smooth, in the powerhouse’s tailrace.
From Forbes ● Oct. 20, 2011
While the log was running through the saw, it was my never ending delight to lean out of an opening in the side of the mill and watch the tailrace rush from under the building.
From Confessions of Boyhood by John Albee
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
