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Dovetail   /dˈəvtˌeɪl/   Listen
noun
Dovetail  n.  (Carp.) A flaring tenon, or tongue (shaped like a bird's tail spread), and a mortise, or socket, into which it fits tightly, making an interlocking joint between two pieces which resists pulling a part in all directions except one.
Dovetail molding (Arch.), a molding of any convex section arranged in a sort of zigzag, like a series of dovetails.
Dovetail saw (Carp.), a saw used in dovetailing.



verb
Dovetail  v. t.  (past & past part. dovetailed; pres. part. dovetailing)  
1.
(Carp.)
(a)
To cut to a dovetail.
(b)
To join by means of dovetails.
2.
To fit in or connect strongly, skillfully, or nicely; to fit ingeniously or complexly. "He put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed... that it was indeed a very curious show."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dovetail" Quotes from Famous Books



... offices afford them an excellent variety of characters, which, like skilful dramatists, they work up until they become really humorous: many of the cases afford them capital plots, into which they cleverly dovetail pleasant little episodes, and adhere no closer to the deposed facts than many of our by-gone playwrights have done to the sacred page of history. We allude only to the cases of humour which occur at the police-offices: those reports ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various

... slow because they do not need to be otherwise; the conditions of their lives do not require speed and sharpness. The porcupine has its barbed quills, the skunk its pungent secretion. All parts of nature dovetail together. The deer and the antelope kind have speed and sharp senses because their enemies have speed and sharp senses. The small birds are keen-eyed and watchful because the hawks are so, too. The red squirrel dominates the gray squirrel, which is above him in size and strength, and the chipmunk ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... Archilochus. Opinion has been divided as to whether Annius was wholly a knave, or whether he was himself imposed upon. Or, again, whether he had some genuine fragments, and eked them out with his own inventions. It is observed that he did not dovetail the really genuine relics of Berosus and Manetho into the works attributed to them. This may be explained as the result of ignorance or of cunning; there can be no certain inference. "Even the Dominicans," as Bayle says, admit ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... perpetual zigzag,) counted up to something more than a thousand miles. That is, in effect, when valued in loss of time, and allowance being made for the want of continuity in those parts of the travelling system that did not accurately dovetail into each other, not less than one entire fortnight must be annually sunk upon a labor that yielded no commensurate fruit. Hence the long three-years' interval which had separated father and son; and hence my own nervous apprehension, as we were racing through the suburbs of Dublin, that ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... the child to dovetail the two halves of her life. At night she must sit up as late as her elders, poring over her school books, and in the morning it was a fierce rush to get through her share of the housework in time for the red mark. In Mrs. Beckenstein's language: 'Don't eat, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill


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