I know reverse is correct, but why does the general public say heads or tails when flipping a coin ? heads is easy to see the origin off, but why tails ?
My guess is that it has something to do with the tail of the eagle on the reverse of many U.S. coins.
Very easy way to find out is to go to Google, type in coin tails and that will take you to several things but one is Wikipedia encylopedia where it is completely explained.
Wikpedia has a good article on it. I tried to post the site here but it gave me something altogether different.
I read the Wiki stuff. A British friend tried to tell me its from their pennies, I don't quite buy that. Actually the first pennies had St George slaying the dragon on the opposite side, not sure if its obverse or inverse but the tail of the dragon went right along the bottom of the coin, hece tails. Once again you can thank the British for part of your heritage. I looked at photos of pennies, they have a figure sitting on a shield, holding a pitchfork, looks satanic almost, I don't see the tail he talks of.
Well, I'm no Wikipedia expert, but I do know it's common to refer to coins from time to time in the feminine pronouns...
Yup, it is. But that one line from Wiki is probably as close as any - "In 1870 Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable describes heads in a similar way and details tails as being the opposite and obvious reverse to heads. The expression 'can't make head nor tail of it' expresses this concept of opposites."
possibly I don't buy the English fellows explanation. Wikipedia seems incomplete. I'm leaning to the analagy of an animal ( like a horse) having a head, and a tail at the opposite end. A coin usually has a head, so opposite side is tail ?
I'm sure a more expert person on British coinage can verify this, but I don't think I've ever seen Pistrucci's "St. George Slaying the Dragon" on a penny; I've only ever seen it as the reverse of crowns and sovereigns. Though I suppose the term may have originated from them rather than the penny. However it seems a rather dubious explanation... I think seeing "tails" as opposite of "heads" probably doesn't have much to do with a tail being on the reverse of the coin so much as it's a result of figurative wordplay; an animal has a head, the opposite end has the tail, and I think it was applied to coins that way, treating the side with a head on it as "heads" and the opposite side as "tails" even though it didn't necessarily depict a tail. Just my guess.
I just assumed that since one side had a head...the other became 'tails' by default since on the opposite end of things would be the tail.
