hightail it
English
Alternative forms
- high-tail it
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
hightail it (third-person singular simple present hightails it, present participle hightailing it, simple past and past participle hightailed it)
- (informal, chiefly Canada, US) To hurry or run; often, to flee.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:move quickly, Thesaurus:flee
- He started to hightail it out of there, but I stopped him at the door.
- The cat hightailed it out of the bushes.
- 2004, Rex Pickett, Sideways, St. Martin's Griffin, →ISBN, page 292:
- "Great! A guy getting off a night shift who hasn't been laid in years finds his wife in flagrante with some hamburger-faced guy who hightails it out the front door in his underwear. We're walking into a hornet's nest, Jackson."
- 2021 February 3, Drachinifel, Guadalcanal Campaign - Santa Cruz (IJN 2 : 2 USN), archived from the original on 4 December 2022, retrieved 11 December 2022, 21:35 from the start:
- Whilst sinking, there was still a small chance that Hornet might be towed out of the danger zone and then reboarded, but, by now, the Japanese Navy surface forces were getting closer, and the order was given to scuttle Hornet instead. But, she proved remarkably hard to actually encourage to sink at any pace but her own. A number of torpedoes and several hundred 5-inch shells later, the two destroyers assigned to the job seemed none the closer to actually finishing it, and they were forced to hightail it out of the area. Shortly after ten o'clock that night, the Japanese forces came across the still-afloat, and still-ablaze, Hornet, but, concluding, at this point, that taking her as a prize wasn't particularly likely, they put four Long Lances into her, and Hornet finally sank just after one-thirty in the morning.
- 2022 April 5, Michal Leibowitz, “'I Didn't Feel Like Going, but I'm Glad I Did': My Motto of the Moment”, in The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331:
- I made awkward small talk with my seat neighbor and high-tailed it home before the socializing began in earnest.
Translations
to hurry or run; often, to flee
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