Rail Meaning
/ɹeɪ(ə)l/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing.
nounThe metal bar forming part of the track for a railroad.
Sentence Examples
The town is accessible by rail.
The cost of the air fare is higher than of the rail fare.
She leaned on the ship's rail and gazed out to sea.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The locomotive relies on the iron ____ to stay on track and move forward.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
She gripped the ____ tightly as the ship rolled in the heavy swell of the open ocean.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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."
— 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
"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."
— 2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly):
"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."
— 1975, Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital. 1848-1875, published 1995, page 72:
"There has been another, fairly gradual change in the ATX specification: Initially a lot of power was supplied on the 5V and 3.3V rails, but over time more and more power shifted to 12V because it's more efficient. Modern (ATX12V 2.x) PSUs supply most of their power on the 12V rail and not a lot on the 5V rail, which means a modern PSU may not be able to supply an old board, unless it's a really beefy PSU—because providing 500W on the 12V rail is of very little use to an AT or early ATX system."
— 2019 December 5, Michal Necasek, “Power Trouble”, in OS/2 Museum, archived from the original on 25 Sep 2022:
"Do a couple rails and chase your own tail"
— 2013, Jason Isbell, Super 8:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The locomotive relies on the iron ____ to stay on track and move forward.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
She gripped the ____ tightly as the ship rolled in the heavy swell of the open ocean.