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Allin

tailor

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈteɪlə//
  • United States//ˈteɪlɚ//

A person who makes, repairs, or alters clothes professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.

noun

  1. 1

    A person who makes, repairs, or alters clothes professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.

    He works as a tailor on Swanston Street.

  2. 2

    Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix).

    The tailor — is that a sea fish — a line fish? It is a sea fish, but not a line fish. They will bite at a line, but they are not a fish you can depend on with the line.

Etymology

Etymology tree Latin tālea Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Late Latin tāliō Old French taillierder. Old French tailleorder. Anglo-Norman taillourbor. Middle English taillour English tailor Inherited from Middle English taillour, from Anglo-Norman taillour, from Old French tailleor, from taillier, from Late Latin tāliō, from Latin tālea (“a cutting”). Doublet of tailleur. Compare typologically German Schneider (akin to English snithe); Macedonian кројач (krojač), Polish krawiec (akin to Proto-Slavic *krojiti).

verb

  1. 1

    To make, repair, or alter clothes.

    We can tailor that jacket for you if you like.

  2. 2

    figurativeTo make or adapt (something) for a specific need.

    The website was tailored to the client's needs.

    [C]aregivers from diverse backgrounds may experience variations in the emergence of depressive symptoms, necessitating distinct strategies for support tailored to their individual needs.

  3. 3

    figurativeTo restrict (something) in order to meet a particular need.

    a narrowly tailored law

Forms

plural
tailors
past tense
tailored
past participle
tailored
present participle
tailoring
third person singular
tailors
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).