tandem [L18th] In Latin tandem means ‘after a long time’ or ‘at length’. It first came into English as a slang term for a carriage drawn by two horses harnessed one behind the other—a ‘long’ set-up which inspired a pun on ‘at length’, which was transferred to a bicycle in the late 19th century. The expression in tandem [M20] is still used today to mean ‘one behind another’, but is more common in the sense ‘together as a team’.