rail
/ɹeɪ(ə)l/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.41 in modern English
4
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A railroad; a railway, as a means of transportation.
noun
A conductor maintained at a fixed electrical potential relative to ground, to which other circuit components are connected.
noun
One of the lengthwise edges of a surfboard.
noun
A vertical section on one side of a web page.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "We travelled to the seaside by rail."
- "a small Scottish village not accessible by rail"
- "rail transport"
- "It is impossible not to share the mood of excitement, of self-confidence, of pride, which seized those who lived through this heroic age of the engineers, as the railway first linked Channel and Mediterranean, as it became possible to travel by rail to Seville, to Moscow, to Brindisi, as the iron tracks pushed westwards across the North American prairies and mountains and across the Indian sub-continent in the 1860s, up the Nile valley, and into the hinterlands of Latin America in the 1870s."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *h₃réǵeti Proto-Italic *regō Latin regō Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-trom Proto-Indo-European *-tlom, *-dʰlom Latin -ula Latin rēgulabor. Proto-West Germanic *regulu Old English regol ▲ Latin rēgula Old French reillebor. Middle English rail English rail 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 regō (“to rule, to guide, to govern”); see regular. Doublet of regal, regula, rigol, and rule.