Rail

How to spell rail

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rail

What does rail mean?

1. nounA horizontal bar fixed as part of a fence, barrier, or support, or a metal track on which trains run.
2. verbTo protest or complain angrily and at length about something.

Rail in a sentence

• noun

  She gripped the rail as she climbed the steep staircase.

• verb

  Residents continued to rail against the new parking charges.

• noun

  The train slipped off the rail during the storm.

• verb

  Critics rail at the rising cost of housing every year.

Where does rail come from?

Language of origin: French

The everyday noun rail came into English in the 1300s from Old French reille, meaning a bar or rod, which traces back to the Latin regula, a 'straight stick' or 'ruler' (the same root behind the words 'rule' and 'regular'). The original idea was simply a slender straight bar, and from there English extended it to fences, railings, and eventually, in the nineteenth century, the metal tracks that carry trains, giving us 'railway' and 'railroad'. The verb meaning 'to complain bitterly or protest angrily' has a completely separate history: it arrived in the 1400s from Old French railler, 'to mock or jest', which is related to the Italian word that also gave English 'rally'. There is even a third rail, the name of a secretive marsh bird, borrowed from Old French raale. Because all three words collapsed onto the same simple spelling, the trap is purely in choosing rail over its homophone 'rale', not in the letters themselves.

How the word is built

• rail (single root; from Latin regula 'straight stick, rule')