subs. phr. (common).—A coward, renegade, pervert. TO TURN TAIL = (1) to change sides, (2) to turn one’s back upon, and (3) to run away, to shirk.

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  1580.  SIDNEY, Arcadia, ii. So would she, as it were, TURN TAIL to the heron, and fly quite out another way.

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  1612.  BRETON, Pasquil’s Night-Cap.

        How brittle, fickle, wauering, false, and fraile,
Like to a wether-cocke, still TURNING TAILE?

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  c. 1612.  CORBET, Iter Boreale.

        His mare went truer then his chronicle;
And even for conscience sake, unspurr’d, unbeaten,
Brought us six miles, and TURN’D TAYLE at Nuneaton.

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  1621.  SYLVESTER, Du Bartas, ‘The Furies.’

          Ere that our sire, O too, too proudly base,
TURNED TAIL to God and to the fiend his face.

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  1632.  JONSON, The Magnetic Lady, v. 5. Would thou hadst a dose of pills … to make thee TURN TAIL t’other way.

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  1663.  BUTLER, Hudibras, I. iii.

        Yet shame and honour might prevail
To keep thee thus from TURNING TAIL.

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  1874.  BEETON, The Siliad, 15.

        A general Hubbub all the force misled,
And one, a Highland chief, TURNED TAIL and fled.

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