tail off

phrasal verb

tailed off; tailing off; tails off
: to become smaller or quieter in a gradual way
Our productivity tailed off last year.
She started to ask a question and then her voice tailed off.

Examples of tail off in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web The Three Crowns’s McEvoy thinks that has tailed off in place of Guinness. Ryan Hogg, Fortune Europe, 16 Mar. 2024 The 41-year-old Alonso finished on the podium eight times last year and initially appeared to pose a threat to Red Bull’s dominance, though the car’s competitiveness tailed off towards the end of the season. Sam Joseph, CNN, 29 Feb. 2024 Cricket Wireless, which is owned by AT&T, had more than 9,000 outages at one point but the reports had also tailed off later in the afternoon. Michelle Chapman, Fortune, 23 Feb. 2024 De La Cruz tailed off after a red-hot start as a rookie in 2023, while Marté hit .316 in 114 at-bats and enters the season as an NL Rookie of the Year favorite. Jesse Yomtov, USA TODAY, 20 Feb. 2024 Because reporting and interest in general have tailed off, no one has a good idea how many cases are actually occurring, but there are enough that hospitalizations have doubled since autumn. Cory Franklin, Twin Cities, 9 Jan. 2024 But Kopitar and winger Adrian Kempe tailed off, with Kempe going eight games without a goal starting Jan. 9 and Kopitar hampered by an undisclosed injury. Helene Elliott, Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2024 And while DuVernay has been running her tail off trying to promote it this month, the players of the race already felt set in stone. Jada Yuan, Washington Post, 23 Jan. 2024 Biotech’s hot start has already tailed off A spate of deals at last week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference sent biotech stocks to heights not seen since 2022, but once the flow of billion-dollar agreements ceased, sentiment quickly came back to earth. Damian Garde, STAT, 18 Jan. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tail off.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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Cite this Entry

“Tail off.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tail%20off. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

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