coattail

plural coattails · alternative coat-tail

1. The flap at the back of a coat that hangs down, sometimes below the waist.

   At twilight in the summer[…]the mice come out. They[…]eat the luncheon crumbs. Mr. Checkly, for instance, always brought his dinner in a paper parcel in his coat-tail pocket, and ate it when so disposed, sprinkling crumbs lavishly[…]on the floor.

   1892, Walter Besant, chapter II, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC

2. figurativelyplural normallySuccess of a figure, organization or movement that transfers to those who associate with it.

   to ride the coattails

   2 more examples

   Mr Obama’s coat-tails may help lift Wall-Street-basher Elizabeth Warren past pickup-driving Everyman and one-time nude pin-up Scott Brown in Massachusetts[…].

   2012 October 6, “The Senate: Not so flippable”, in The Economist, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2023

   And Harford grabs the coattails of the trend, giving us 10 rules for thinking differently about numbers in the news, ranging from “check your feelings”, to “ponder your personal experience”, to “keep an open mind”.

   2020 November 17, Ben Chu, “Review: How to Make the World Add Up, by Tim Harford”, in The Independent, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2025, retrieved 13 Jan 2021

present singular third person coattails · participle present coattailing · participle past coattailed · past coattailed · alternative coat-tail

1. ambitransitiveTo ride the coattails of.

   It wasn't like I just coattailed the auditor's work. Based on the names on the time cards, I was able to conduct interviews with the employees whose labor was mischarged, and they told me which contracts they had actually worked on.

   2014, Charles E. Piper, Investigator and Fraud Fighter Guidebook: Operation War Stories, page 139

   1 more example

   The first of these is what Holt calls coat-tailing on cultural epicenters. Through coat-tailing, the brand becomes part of a social movement or emergent meaning-making sub-culture such that it stands as a vested community member […]

   2018, Curtis P. Haugtvedt, Paul M. Herr, Frank R. Kardes, Handbook of Consumer Psychology