on the coattails

1. 1.

   immediately following or undeservedly benefiting from

   “the CEO resigned on the coattails of the scandal”

   “he was elected on his predecessor's coattails”

   Synonymsone one's coattails

Questions about on the coattails

What does on the coattails mean?

on the coattails means "immediately following or undeservedly benefiting from".

What is another word for on the coattails?

Close synonyms include one one's coattails. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is on the coattails a common word?

on the coattails is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.