rail

See also: raíl

English

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɹeɪl/, [ɹeɪɫ]
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪl

Etymology 1

From Middle English rail, rayl, *reȝel, *reȝol (found in reȝolsticke (“a ruler”)), partly from Old English regol (“a ruler, straight bar”) and partly from Old French reille; both from Latin regula (“rule, bar”), from regere (“to rule, to guide, to govern”); see regular.

Noun

rail (plural rails)

  1. A horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing.
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 7, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      Old Applegate, in the stern, just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of the skiff's rail, close to the stern.
  2. The metal bar that makes the track for a railroad.
    • 2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly):
      A “moving platform” scheme […] is more technologically ambitious than maglev trains even though it relies on conventional rails. Local trains would use side-by-side rails to roll alongside intercity trains and allow passengers to switch trains by stepping through docking bays.
  3. A railroad; a railway, as a means of transportation.
    We travelled to the seaside by rail.
    a small Scottish village not accessible by rail
  4. A horizontal piece of wood that serves to separate sections of a door or window.
  5. (surfing) One of the lengthwise edges of a surfboard.
    • c. 2000, Nick Carroll, surfline.com :
      Rails alone can only ever have a marginal effect on a board's general turning ability.
  6. (Internet) A vertical section on one side of a web page.
    We're experimenting with ads in the right-hand rail.
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Verb

rail (third-person singular simple present rails, present participle railing, simple past and past participle railed)

  1. (intransitive) To travel by railway.
    • Rudyard Kipling
      Mottram of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from his lonely post in the desert […]
  2. (transitive) To enclose with rails or a railing.
    • Ayliffe
      It ought to be fenced in and railed.
  3. (transitive) To range in a line.
    • Francis Bacon
      They were brought to London all railed in ropes, like a team of horses in a cart.
Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

French râle, Old French rasle. Compare Medieval Latin rallus. Named from its harsh cry, Vulgar Latin *rasculum, from Latin rādere (“to scrape”).

Noun

rail (plural rails)

Wikispecies

  1. Any of several birds in the family Rallidae.

Usage notes

Not all birds in the family Rallidae are rails by their common name. The family also includes coots, moorhens, crakes, flufftails, waterhens and others.

Derived terms
Translations

See also

Etymology 3

From Middle French railler.

Verb

rail (third-person singular simple present rails, present participle railing, simple past and past participle railed)

  1. To complain violently (against, about).
    • 2012 June 4, Lewis Smith, “Queen's English Society says enuf is enough, innit?”, in the Guardian‎:
      The Queen may be celebrating her jubilee but the Queen's English Society, which has railed against the misuse and deterioration of the English language, is to fold.
    • 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Abacus 2010, p. 27:
      Chief Joyi railed against the white man, whom he believed had deliberately sundered the Xhosa tribe, dividing brother from brother.
Translations

Etymology 4

From Middle English rail, reil, from Old English hræġl (“agarment, dress, robe”). Cognate with Old Frisian hreil, reil, Old Saxon hregil, Old High German hregil (“clothing, garment, dress”).

Alternative forms

  • rayle

Noun

rail (plural rails)

  1. (obsolete) An item of clothing; a cloak or other garment; a dress.
  2. (obsolete) Specifically, a woman's headscarf or neckerchief.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Fairholt to this entry?)
Derived terms

Etymology 5

Probably from Anglo-Norman raier, Middle French raier.

Verb

rail (third-person singular simple present rails, present participle railing, simple past and past participle railed)

  1. (obsolete) To gush, flow (of liquid).
    • 1485 July 31, Thomas Malory, “(please specify the chapter)”, in [Le Morte Darthur], (please specify the book number), [London: William Caxton], OCLC 71490786; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur, London: Published by David Nutt, in the Strand, 1889, OCLC 890162034:
      , Bk.V, Ch.iv:
      his breste and his brayle was bloodé – and hit rayled all over the see.
    • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, IV.2:
      So furiously each other did assayle, / As if their soules they would attonce haue rent / Out of their brests, that streames of bloud did rayle / Adowne, as if their springes of life were spent […].

Anagrams

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English rail.

Pronunciation

Noun

rail f (plural rails, diminutive railsje n or railtje n)

  1. rail

Usage notes

The diminutive railsjes is only used if used for railway tracks.[1]

References

French

Etymology

From English rail.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ʁaj/
  • audio(file)
  • Homophone: raï

Noun

rail m (plural rails)

  1. rail

Further reading

Anagrams

Spanish

Noun

rail m (plural railes)

  1. Alternative form of raíl

Further reading

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