Train

How to spell train

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce train

What does train mean?

1. nounA series of connected railway carriages or wagons hauled along a track.
2. verbTo teach a person or animal a skill through practice and instruction, or to prepare oneself physically.
3. nounA trailing or connected sequence, such as the long part of a gown or a series of thoughts or events.

Train in a sentence

• noun

  The morning train to the city was delayed by twenty minutes.

• verb

  The company will train new staff during their first week.

• noun

  The bride's gown had a long train that swept the aisle.

• noun

  They boarded the overnight train with all their luggage.

• verb

  She wants to train for the marathon over the summer.

• noun

  A sudden noise broke his train of thought.

Where does train come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the 1300s from Old French, where the noun traïn meant a trailing part or something dragged along, and the verb trainer meant 'to drag, pull, or draw out'. Both go back to the Latin verb trahere, which literally meant 'to pull or drag', the same root that gives us 'tractor', 'attract', and 'extract'. The earliest English senses were the very physical ones: the long trailing part of a robe, and a line of followers or pack animals strung out behind a leader. From the idea of a connected line drawn along came the sense of teaching or disciplining (drawing a person or animal toward a desired form), and in the 1800s the linked carriages of a railway naturally took the name because they too were a line of things drawn along a track. The spelling keeps the French 'ai', which is worth noting since the word sounds like a simple long 'a'.

How the word is built

• train (from Old French traïn 'something dragged along', from Latin trahere 'to pull, drag')