metals

• Homophone: meddles (in accents with flapping)

metals

1. plural of metal

metals pl (plural only)

1. (rail transport) the rail tracks owned by a company or organisation; a rail network

   It was appropriate that 'King' number 6000 began the return to steam on British Rail metals in 1971.

   • 1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, “chapter 8”, in Kim (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; no. 414), London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC:

     Now and again a night train roared along the metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the Oriental’s indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a dream through his slumber.

   • 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 7”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

     They stood on the foot-bridge over Boathouse Station and looked at the metals gleaming coldly.

   • 2019 October, James Abbott, “Esk Valley revival”, in Modern Railways, pages 77, 78:

     Steam services began running over NR [Network Rail] metals from Grosmont to the traffic objective of Whitby in 2007, with operations enhanced by opening of the second platform at the terminus in 2014.

metals

1. third-person singular simple present indicative of metal

• “metal”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• lamest, malest, samlet

metals n

1. indefinite genitive singular of metal

metals

1. plural of metal