tramline
/ˈtɹæmlaɪn/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.63 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Either of the two pairs of sidelines marked on a tennis court which mark the outside of the singles and doubles playing areas.
British usage
noun
A pair of vertical bars (||) placed to the left of the headword in certain editions of the OED to indicate that the term is "alien or not fully naturalized" (such as a recent borrowing).
Example Sentences
- "Transport, motorways and tramlines / Starting and then stopping"
- "The tramline is therefore much less obvious on the screen. Also, if the scratch is on the base (i.e., on the back of the film), then it will not be in sharp focus."
- "a tramline scar"
- "The well-reported "tramlines" or parallel punctate scars on either side of the vein were seen in only four patients."
- "Those words that [James] Murray classified as denizens and aliens, as well as those casuals approaching these two prior categories, were marked by two parallel lines beside the headword (||), a symbol known by the in-house term tramline. Murray himself admitted to the inherent subjectivity of his method of classification, which unsurprisingly led to a number of inconsistencies in the use of tramlines, and may even have contributed to the patchiness of the OED's regional coverage that Weiner acknowledged many years later."
Etymology
Usage
- British usage
- Intransitive verb