rails
noun
Form of rail , plural of rail.
Simple meaning
A bar or pair of parallel bars of rolled steel making the railway along which railroad cars or other vehicles can roll.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
raylzIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹeɪlz
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A bar or pair of parallel bars of rolled steel making the railway along which railroad cars or other vehicles can roll
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- General and technical use
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A bar or pair of parallel bars of rolled steel making the railway along which railroad cars or other vehicles can roll
Used this way, rails is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use rails
- “The train traveled quickly along the metal rails.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A barrier consisting of a horizontal bar and supports.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A wheeled vehicle adapted to the rails of railroad.
One of the cross braces that support the rails on a railway track.
A wheeled vehicle adapted to the rails of railroad.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- locomotivenoun
- railnoun
- horizontaladjective
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: bar
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.