rail

• enPR: rāl, IPA^(key): /ɹeɪl/, [ɹeɪɫ]

• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -eɪl

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.

rail (plural rails)

1. A horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing.
   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     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 forming part of the track for a railroad.
   • 2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly):

     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, as a means of transportation.

   We travelled to the seaside by rail.

   a small Scottish village not accessible by rail

   rail transport

4. (electronics) A conductor maintained at a fixed electrical potential relative to ground, to which other circuit components are connected.

   ISA devices draw power from the +5 V, −5 V, +12 V, and −12 V rails of the power supply unit.

   • 2019 December 5, Michal Necasek, “Power Trouble”, in OS/2 Museum‎^[1], archived from the original on 25 September 2022:

     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.

5. A horizontal piece of wood that serves to separate sections of a door or window.
6. (surfing) One of the lengthwise edges of a surfboard.
   • c. 2000, Nick Carroll, surfline.com [2]:

     Rails alone can only ever have a marginal effect on a board's general turning ability.

7. (Internet) A vertical section on one side of a web page.

   We're experimenting with ads in the right-hand rail.

8. (drugs) A large line (portion or serving of a powdery illegal drug).
   • 2013, Jason Isbell, Super 8:

     Do a couple rails and chase your own tail

9. Each of two vertical side bars supporting the rungs of a ladder.

   Synonyms: stile, stringer

10. (backgammon) The raised edge of the game board.

rail (third-person singular simple present rails, present participle railing, simple past and past participle railed)

1. (intransitive) To travel by railway.
   • 1890, Rudyard Kipling, At the End of the Passage:

     Mottram of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from his lonely post in the desert […]

2. (transitive, rail transport, of rolling stock) To place on a track.
3. (transitive) To enclose with rails or a railing.
   • 1726, John Ayliffe, Parergon Juris Canonici Anglicani: Or, A Commentary, by Way of Supplement to the Canons and Constitutions of the Church of England. […], London: […] D. Leach, and sold by John Walthoe […], →OCLC:

     It ought to be fenced in and railed.

4. (transitive) To range in a line.
   • 1622, Francis, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Alban [i.e. Francis Bacon], The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, […], London: […] W[illiam] Stansby for Matthew Lownes, and William Barret, →OCLC:

     They were brought to London all railed in ropes, like a team of horses in a cart.

5. (transitive, vulgar, slang) To sexually penetrate in a rough manner.

• derail
• rerail
• unrail

From French râle, rale, from Middle French raalle, from Old French rasle. Compare Medieval Latin rallus. Named from its harsh cry, Vulgar Latin *rasculum, from Latin rādere (“to scrape”).

rail (plural rails)

Wikispecies

1. Any of several birds in the family Rallidae.

• Not all birds in the family Rallidae are rails by their common name. The family also includes coots, moorhens, crakes, flufftails, waterhens and others.

• Aldabra rail
• Aztec rail (Rallus tenuirostris)
• banded rail
• barred rail (Hypotaenidia okinawae)
• bar-winged rail
• buff-banded rail (Hypotaenidia philippensis)
• Calayan rail (Gallirallus calayanensis)
• Chatham rail
• chestnut rail (Eulabeornis castaneoventris)
• clapper rail (Rallus crepitans)
• Dieffenbach's rail
• forest rail (Rallicula spp.)
• grey-throated rail (Canirallus oculeus)
• Guam rail (Hypotaenidia owstoni)
• Inaccessible Island rail
• invisible rail
• king rail (Rallus elegans)
• Laysan rail
• mangrove rail (Rallus longirostris)
• Mexican rail
• New Guinea flightless rail
• Nkulengu rail
• Okinawa rail (Hypotaenidia okinawae)
• pink-legged rail (Hypotaenidia insignis)
• red rail
• Ridgway's rail (Rallus obsoletus)
• Rouget's rail
• Roviana rail (Hypotaeinidia rovianae)
• snoring rail (Aramidopsis plateri)
• Virginia rail
• water rail (Rallus aquaticus)
• white-throated rail
• Woodford's rail (Hypotaenidia woodfordi)
• wood rail (Aramides spp.)
• Zapata rail

• ralline

• corncrake

From Middle French railler.

rail (third-person singular simple present rails, present participle railing, simple past and past participle railed)

2. To complain violently (against, about).

   Synonyms: fulminate, inveigh

   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), W[illiam] Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. […] (First Quarto), [London]: […] J[ames] Roberts [for Thomas Heyes], published 1600, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

     Till thou canst raile the seale from off my bond
     Thou but offend'st thy Lungs to speake so loud:
     Repaire thy wit good youth, or it will fall
     To endlesse ruine. I stand heere for Law.

   • 1882, Mark Twain, “The Stolen White Elephant”‎^[3]:

     He always said: “Let them rail on; he laughs best who laughs last.”

   • 1910, "Saki", H. H. Munro, The Bag,[4]

     The Major’s fury clothed and reclothed itself in words as frantically as a woman up in town for one day’s shopping tries on a succession of garments. He reviled and railed at fate and the general scheme of things, he pitied himself with a strong, deep pity too poignant for tears, he condemned every one with whom he had ever come in contact to endless and abnormal punishments.

   • 1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London: Abacus, published 2010, page 27:

     Chief Joyi railed against the white man, whom he believed had deliberately sundered the Xhosa tribe, dividing brother from brother.

   • 2012 June 4, Lewis Smith, “Queen’s English Society says enuf is enough, innit?: Society formed 40 years ago to protect language against poor spelling and grammar closes because too few people care”, in The Guardian‎^[5], London, archived from the original on 10 March 2016:

     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.

• raillery

From Middle English rail, reil, from Old English hræġl (“garment, dress, robe”). Cognate with Old Frisian hreil, reil, Old Saxon hregil, Old High German hregil (“clothing, garment, dress”).

• rayle

rail (plural rails)

1. (obsolete) An item of clothing; a cloak or other garment; a dress.
2. (obsolete) Specifically, a woman's headscarf or neckerchief.
   • 1592, Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penniless:

     A course hempen raile about her shoulders.

• night-rail

Probably from Anglo-Norman raier, Middle French raier.

rail (third-person singular simple present rails, present participle railing, simple past and past participle railed)

1. (obsolete, of a liquid) To gush; to flow.
   • 1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum iv”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book V, [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur […], London: David Nutt, […], 1889, →OCLC:

     his breste and his brayle was bloodé – and hit rayled all over the see.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     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 […].

2. (obsolete, of wind) To blow.

• ride the rail

• Lair, aril, lair, lari, liar, lira, rial

• raïl (superseded)

Borrowed from English rail.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic, Valencia) [ˈrajl]

rail m (plural rails)

1. rail

   Synonym: carril

• “rail” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Borrowed from English rail.

• (Belgium) IPA^(key): /rel/
• (Netherlands) IPA^(key): /reːl/

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rail f (plural rails, diminutive railsje n or railtje n)

1. rail

The diminutive railsjes is only used if used for railway tracks.^[1]

• → Caribbean Javanese: ril
• → Indonesian: rel

Borrowed from English rail. Doublet of règle, reille, rigole, and rille.

• IPA^(key): /ʁaj/

• Audio:

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• Homophone: raï

rail m (plural rails)

1. rail

• “rail”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• lira

rail m (plural railes)

1. (rare) Alternative form of raíl

• “rail”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2023 November 28