Rail

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɹeɪɫ/,
• Rhymes: -eɪl

Old French reille, Latin regula ("rule, bar"), from regere ("to rule, to guide, to govern"); see regular.

Full definition of rail

Noun

1. A horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing.
• 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, Mr. Pratt's Patients Chapter 7, 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.
• 2013-06-01, Ideas coming down the track, 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.
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.
• circa 2000 Nick Carroll, surfline.com http://www.surfline.com/community/whoknows/10_21_rails.cfm:Rails alone can only ever have a marginal effect on a board's general turning ability.

Derived terms

Verb

1. (intransitive) To travel by railway.
• Rudyard KiplingMottram 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.
• AyliffeIt ought to be fenced in and railed.
3. (transitive) To range in a line.
• Francis BaconThey were brought to London all railed in ropes, like a team of horses in a cart.

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

Noun

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

• banded rail

Related terms

• ralline

From Middle French railler.

Verb

1. To complain violently (against, about).
• 2012, June 4, Lewis Smith, Queen's English Society says enuf is enough, innit?, 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.

Old English hræġl.

Noun

1. (obsolete) An item of clothing; a cloak or other garment.
2. (obsolete) Specifically, a woman's headscarf or neckerchief.

Derived terms

• night-rail

Probably from Anglo-Norman raier, Middle French raier.

Verb

1. (obsolete) To gush, flow (of liquid).
• 1485, Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, Book V: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

• aril
• lair
• lari
• liar
• lira
• rial