Meanings
plural long tails
- capitalizedsometimesbusinessSales made for less usual goods within a very large choice, which can return a profit through reduced marketing and distribution costs.
What’s really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than the hits.
2004 October, Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail”, in Wired, →ISSN, archived from the original on 12 Jan 20161 more example
“I would like to tell you that the Internet has made such a level playing field that the Long Tail is absolutely the place to be, that there's so much differentiation, so much diversity, so many new voices. I'd love to tell you that that's in fact how it really works. Unfortunately, it's not,” Schmidt said.
2014, Astra Taylor, quoting Eric Schmidt, chapter 4, in The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN - mathematicsThe tail of a distribution that represents the rare occurrence of extreme values.
Origin
In the marketing sense popularized by journalist Chris Anderson in 2004, alluding to the long tail of a power law distribution.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
French longue traîne
- longue traînesales made for less usual goods
Cite this entry
long tail. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/long%20tail
“long tail.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/long%20tail. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “long tail,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/long%20tail.
Source: long tail on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.