Whale Tail - Term Usage

Term Usage

"Whale tail" was selected in January 2006 as the "most creative word" of 2005 by the American Dialect Society, a group of linguists, editors, and academics. It received 44 votes to "muffin top's" 25, "flee-ancée's" (a reference to runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks 15, and "pinosaur's" (a very old Wollemi pine tree near Australia’s Blue Mountains 6.

While discussing these new coinages, Sali Tagliamonte, associate professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, observed that young women in North America were ahead of young men as influencers. The use of the word to indicate an underwear phenomenon has shown up in serious mainstream news media, sometimes in reference to the pop stars who made the fashion trend popular. Wayne Glowka, member of the Georgia College and State University faculty and head of the New Word Committee of the Dialect Society, said about the happening, "Language is just going on its merry way, creating many new words. It's time for men to win something."

Though the word is not included in major formal dictionaries, web-based user-generated dictionaries like the Urban Dictionary (which provides "pull me thong" as an alternative term for whale tail), the Double-Tongued Dictionary and the Wiktionary, have entries for the word. The book compilation of Urban Dictionary describes the whale tail as "the shape formed when a G-string rides up high over a woman's pants or skirt". The Dialect Society mentioned "longhorn" as an alternate term for the whale tail. A related term – sagging – implies the practice of wearing pants or shorts below the waist so as to reveal some or all of the wearer's underwear. Another related term – buttock cleavage – implies a minor exposure of the buttocks and the gluteal cleft between them not covered by an underwear. A third related term – Visible Panty Line (VPL) – implies underwear becoming visible through clothes.