How to Use swallowtail in a Sentence

swallowtail

noun
  • This gives the new trailer a rear profile that looks like a fishtail or swallowtail.
    — New Atlas, 5 June 2026
  • In due course, a floor manager in a swallowtail coat and striped trousers appeared.
    — David Marchese, New York Times, 2 May 2021
  • Testers found the high ankle swallowtail feature to be a bit extraneous, though the heel cup does hold the foot in place.
    — Outside Online, 27 July 2022
  • For instance, the giant swallowtail caterpillar mimics bird poop–right up to the smell.
    — National Geographic, 26 Mar. 2017
  • The parsley worm, which grows up to be the Eastern black swallowtail, feeds on parsley, dill and fennel.
    — Dan Gill, NOLA.com, 24 June 2017
  • Pack a picnic and follow the swallowtail butterflies throughout the trails.
    — Perri Ormont Blumberg, Southern Living, 5 Oct. 2023
  • Wealthy diners in swallowtail coats feasted on small songbirds soaked in Armagnac, flambéed, and then eaten whole.
    — Brenda Wineapple, New Republic, 21 Dec. 2017
  • Ten millimeters of taper and an easily engaged, sinkable swallowtail help the cause.
    — Drew Zieff, Outside Online, 18 Oct. 2022
  • The swallowtail butterflies had been on the agency’s candidate waitlist for three decades, according to the group.
    — Breanne Deppisch, Washington Examiner, 27 July 2023
  • With the flowers have come swarms of Western tiger swallowtail butterflies and Sphinx moths the size of hummingbirds.
    — Louis Sahagun, latimes.com, 14 July 2017
  • Its flavors seem airborne, flitting around your mouth like a swallowtail and touching down on your palate just long enough to tantalize you into wanting another sip.
    — Washington Post, 30 July 2021
  • In addition, caterpillars of azure and swallowtail butterflies move off their host plants during the autumn, in search of upright stalks to keep their chrysalises off the ground.
    — Tovah Martin, Washington Post, 30 Oct. 2023
  • Various swallowtail and heliconid butterflies are some of roughly 30 species that will be on display.
    — Bradley J. Fikes, sandiegouniontribune.com, 9 Mar. 2018
  • Luckily that doesn’t seem to bother the beautiful anise swallowtail, which uses the plant as its larval host (and lots of other plants in the carrot family).
    — Molly Marquand, Good Housekeeping, 28 July 2016
  • There are a handful of specialized shapes, including a swallowtail in the Weston line, that our testers prefer on road-closing powder days.
    — Drew Zieff, Popular Mechanics, 7 Dec. 2020
  • Each one resembles a specific poisonous monarch butterfly, which explains the species’ common name, the mocker swallowtail.
    — Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 1 Feb. 2022
  • Some types of crab spiders and the giant swallowtail caterpillar also sport white spots and are thought to be emulating the pasty-white urea component of bird excrement.
    — Elizabeth Anne Brown, Scientific American, 13 Dec. 2023
  • The caterpillar's other defenses include inflatable red horns that emit a terrible stink, like those of the spicetail swallowtail.
    — Discover Magazine, 29 June 2010
  • Perhaps the same is true for other butterflies like morphos and pipevine swallowtails, which have independently evolved blue iridescence.
    — Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 18 Sep. 2017
  • The main body of material in the 336-page book focuses on individual species, from swallowtails to silk moths.
    — Sally Peterson, oregonlive, 9 Dec. 2019
  • The exterior side of the Kawana’s swallowtail is about a half-inch more pronounced than the interior side and is apparently meant to distribute the weight of a heel strike.
    — Joe Jackson, Outside Online, 24 Mar. 2022
  • The deck, now heat- and slip-resistant white porcelain tile instead of red brick, steps down from the back door and stretches toward an arbutus tree whose flowers and fruit attract hummingbirds and swallowtails.
    — Emily Young, Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug. 2019
  • Their attempt to attract wildlife has paid off with regular visits by tiger swallowtail, monarch butterflies, black carpenter bees, ladybugs, hummingbirds, quail and lizards.
    — Marta Yamamoto, The Mercury News, 21 Apr. 2017
  • Other butterflies rely on a single host plant for survival as well, such as zebra swallowtail butterflies and paw paw trees, and spicebush swallowtail butterflies on spicebush shrubs.
    — Susan Brownstein, cleveland, 25 July 2023
  • Unlike the giant swallowtail, the gulf fritillary hatches a large number of caterpillars on its egg-laying site, and those caterpillars will often strip it of foliage during the breeding season.
    — Calvin Finch, San Antonio Express-News, 4 June 2021
  • Butterflies by the scores — swallowtails and cloudless sulphurs, mostly — crowded around the muddy edges of a depression holding remains of a recent rare shower, sucking up crucial moisture.
    — Shannon Tompkins, Houston Chronicle, 3 May 2018
  • Late summer brought a squadron of swallowtail butterflies that seemed to prefer feeding on the leathery leaves of ceanothus while nearby the busy skipper butterflies focused on clusters of wildflowers closer to the ground.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Nov. 2020
  • Decomposing logs attract salamanders and newts, flourishing Dutchman’s pipevine is a host plant for swallowtail butterflies and plant diversity beckons flocks of birds.
    — Marta Yamamoto, The Mercury News, 12 Apr. 2017
  • After blowing up a picture of the swallowtail and failing to find a match in any of her books or online, Kolterman called Roger Hammer, a wildflower expert and fellow butterfly guy.
    — Jenny Staletovich, miamiherald, 22 June 2017
  • The gardens' popular Blooming Butterflies exhibit had just begun, and dozens of species of butterflies from monarchs to black swallowtails were fluttering around inside.
    — Chelsey Lewis, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10 Aug. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'swallowtail.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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