drag one's tail. 1. To be visibly sad or ashamed, especially in
the way one moves about. “The image of a dog with its tail down,
supposedly a sign of unhappiness,” as the Cassell's Dictionary
of Slang puts it. In George MacDonald's fantasy novel for
children, The Princess and Curdie, he describes the scene in
which Curdie introduces the Princess to a grotesquely ugly dog,
Lina, who would accompany them on their quest: |She entered,
creeping with downcast head, and dragging her tail over the
floor behind her. Lina dropped flat on the floor, and covered
her face with her two big paws. It went to the heart of the
princess: in a moment she was on her knees beside her, stroking
her ugly head and petting her all over. Curdie tells the
Princess that “Lina is a woman...she was naughty, but is now
growing good,”which is a whole other story about women as dogs.
The crucial thing here is to distinguish between one who is
dragging his tail in this fashion or more deliberately as in the
second definition. 2.To move or act