Railway

How to spell railway

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce railway

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does railway mean?

1. nounA track of rails on which trains run, or the whole system and company operating such trains.

Railway in a sentence

• The railway connects the two cities in under an hour.

• Engineers spent the night repairing a damaged section of railway track.

Where does railway come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a straightforward compound of two older elements joined in English. The first part, 'rail', came into Middle English from the Old French 'reille', meaning a bar or rod, which traced back to the Latin 'regula', literally a straight stick or ruler used for keeping things in line. The second part, 'way', is a native Germanic word descended from the Old English 'weg', meaning a road, path, or course of travel, and a close relative of the German 'Weg'. The two were fused in the early nineteenth century as iron tracks for guided wheeled transport spread across Britain, with 'railway' recorded from the 1810s and 1820s as the steam railway boom began. British and Commonwealth English settled firmly on 'railway', while American English more often favoured 'railroad', though both terms share the same logic of a 'way' laid with 'rails'. Because both halves are common everyday words, the spelling holds few surprises beyond remembering it is written as a single closed compound.

How the word is built

• rail (metal bar forming a track)
• way (route or path, from Old English weg)