Railroad

How to spell railroad

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce railroad

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does railroad mean?

1. nounA track made of rails for trains, or the company and network that operates such trains.
2. verbTo force something through hastily, or to pressure someone unfairly into a decision or conviction.

Railroad in a sentence

• noun

  The new railroad connected the mining town to the coast.

• verb

  The board tried to railroad the merger before anyone could object.

• noun

  He spent thirty years working for the national railroad.

• verb

  She refused to let them railroad her into signing the contract.

Where does railroad come from?

Language of origin: French

Railroad is a transparent compound of two older English words, but each half has a deeper history. The 'rail' element entered English in the 1300s through Old French 'reille', a bar or rod, which itself came from the Latin 'regula', meaning a straight stick or ruler (the same root that gives us 'regular' and 'rule'). The 'road' element is native Germanic, from the Old English 'rad', which originally meant a journey or the act of riding rather than the paved surface we picture today; it is closely related to 'ride'. The two words were welded together in the early 1800s, first in Britain, to describe a track laid with iron rails for horse-drawn or steam-drawn wagons. While British usage soon settled on 'railway', American English kept 'railroad' as the standard term, which is why the word now feels distinctly American. The figurative verb sense, meaning to push something through with reckless speed, grew out of the image of an unstoppable train barreling down the line.

How the word is built

• rail (metal bar/track)
• road (way for travel); a closed compound