Meaning of chase one's tail | Babel Free

Definitions

To busily try to perform many tasks or to repeatedly revise one's plans, especially with inefficient use of one's time and limited results.

idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“People wanting to get⟳ married . . . would have⟳ to trail around separately to arrange⟳ flowers, cars, a photographer, the cake and a reception venue. . . . "At the moment, they have⟳ to chase⟳ their tail making sure all these things are done."”

“"You're forever chasing your tail when you're dealing with such large areas. . . . It was difficult to see⟳ how we would ever get⟳ on top of the problem."”

“The phone rings pretty much immediately and I have⟳ a conversation, usually apologising for something or explaining why I haven't managed to do something. I'm always chasing my tail.”

““If you end⟳ up changing your strategy based on hot or cold tendencies, more often than not, you’re chasing your tail and you’re actually destroying value rather than sticking to what you know⟳ is right based off the data over a longer period of time,” Luhnow said.”

“Baby, I know⟳ places we won't be found, and They'll be chasing their tails trying to track us down”

“What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show⟳, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked Arab world whose Sunni-Shia balance (insofar as that went) was upended by the American invasion of Iraq.”

CEFR level