turn tail

1. (idiomatic) To turn away from someone or something, in preparation for running away; to reverse direction; to leave or flee.
   • 1838, Charles Dickens, "Some Particulars Concerning A Lion" in Mudfog and Other Sketches:

     A box-lobby lion or a Regent-street animal . . . will never bite, and, if you offer to attack him manfully, will fairly turn tail and sneak off.

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of CorrynaKeigh”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, Limited., OCLC 1056292939 ↗, page 202 ↗:

     [H]e stormed at me all through the lessons in a very violent manner of scolding, [...] I was often tempted to turn tail, but held my ground for all that, and got some profit of my lessons; [...]

   • 1911 June, Jack London, “Cruising in the Solomons”, in The Cruise of the Snark, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, OCLC 1619565 ↗, page 279 ↗:

     Morning found us still vainly toiling through the passage. At last, in despair, we turned tail, ran out to sea, and sailed clear round Bassakanna to our objective, Malu.

   • 1945 April 3, Bruce Rae, "Okinawa: The Marines Have Landed," New York Times, p. 1:

     Five of the enemy planes were shot down and the remainder turned tail.

   • 2011 April 27, Vivienne Walt, "[http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2067835,00.html Have Fuel, Will Fight]," Time:

     The men blew up two oil pipelines in eastern Libya near the rebel-held Sarir fields, before turning tail and speeding back west.