👉 Okay, let’s tackle that wonderfully weird little wiggle of a word – decidedly, unapologetically... ring-tailed!
Now, when I say "ring-tailed," most immediately you probably conjure up the lemur, right? Swinging through the rainforest, looking perpetually disapproving, sporting that ludicrous, frankly fabulous, swaddle around its backside. That's absolutely smack-dab in the middle of what we mean. Essentially, a ring-tailed thing describes something with… let’s just say… a prominent, decorative, and somewhat medically concerning appendage. It's a fringe! A band! An encircling bit that, frankly, looks rather ornate . Historically, this referred specifically to the bushy, prehensile tail of the ring-tailed lemur—hence the name. But now? Now we throw it around on pretty much anything with an outlying, somewhat theatrical bunch of stuff attached. The whole thing is a bit fussy and a little bit desperate for attention, isn't it? It’s like that flamboyant relative who always wears too many boas. Here's my unsettling, maybe-I'll-never-speak-it-again, example sentence: ’The old taxidermist kept meticulously arranging the severed badger head beneath a ring-tailed garland of human hair, a bizarre and utterly silent testament to his… eccentric affections. --- Okay, okay—maybe that last one was
