1. The piece of anything forming its tail or end; the piece at the end. Also fig.
Among technical uses are the following: the tail-pin of a lathe; in Mining, the perforated end of the tail-pipe of a pump, a snore-piece; in Stereotyping by the paper process, a piece of card-board or the like used to prevent the flow of the metal under the tail-end of the matrix: in Building, a piece inserted by tailing, a floor-timber of which one end rests on the wall; the last sclerite of the pygidium of an invertebrate.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 243. In other fishes the taile-peece is in greatest request.
1843. P. Parley’s Ann., IV. 282. The chimney ended, as all chimneys do, with the sky for a tail-piece, and when Gibbo put his head out at the top, he … looked around him, and drew in a few breathings of pure air.
1847. Webster, Tail-piece..., in a violin, a piece of ebony at the end of the instrument to which the strings are fastened.
1869. Ouseley, Counterp., xxii. 177. It is called the ‘coda,’ or ‘tail-piece,’ of the fugue.
1876. G. F. Chambers, Astron., 635. A tube sliding easily within the tube to which the rack and pinion is attached, and called the tail-piece, is employed for first getting an approximate focus.
1890. Spectator, 31 May. Toplady’s hymn [‘Rock of Ages’] was written as a tail-piece to a controversial article, in which Toplady discussed John Wesley’s doctrines in the matter of faith and works.
2. Printing. A small decorative engraving placed at the end of a book, chapter, etc.
1707. Hearne, Collect., 14 April (O.H.S.), II. 5. In the … Bible are Curious … tayl-pieces.
1762–71. H. Walpole, Vertue’s Anecd. Paint. (1786), IV. 188. Frontispiece and tailpiece to the catalogue of pictures exhibited in 1761.
1862. Ansted, Channel Isl., I. vi. (ed. 2), 124. A view of this wreck … forms a tail-piece to the present chapter.
1895. C. R. B. Barrett, Surrey, iv. 101. My tail-piece to the last chapter has for its subject the back gables of … the Hall.
