white-tailed deer

American  

[hwahyt-tayld, wahyt-] / ˈʰwaɪtˌteɪld, ˈwaɪt- /

Or whitetail deer

noun

1. a common North American deer, Odocoileus virginianus, having a tail with a white underside.

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white-tailed deer British  

noun

1. Also called: Virginia deer. a deer, Odocoileus virginianus, of North America and N South America: the coat varies in colour, being typically reddish-brown in the summer, and the tail is white

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Etymology

Origin of white-tailed deer

An Americanism dating back to 1840–50

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

white-tailed deer

An aerial drone survey in March counted 4,681 white-tailed deer.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026

Texas also hosts a $9.6 billion white-tailed deer hunting industry, reliant on a population that has boomed since screwworm’s eradication.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

Analyses of SARS‐CoV‑2 sequences in a database found two human infections in Massachusetts and one in North Carolina that appear to have come from white-tailed deer.

From Science Magazine ● Apr. 29, 2024

They analyzed 100 fecal samples from white-tailed deer from different regions of the U.S., of which half have chronic wasting disease and half do not.

From Science Daily ● Feb. 12, 2024

At first only two came, then five, and soon I had a ring of large-eyed white-tailed deer waiting at my tree at twilight for me to come out and chop off limbs.

From "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George

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