subway
noun · verb
Simple meaning
An underground tunnel or passage enabling pedestrians to cross a road or railway.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
suhbwaySay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsʌbweɪ
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
British
An underground tunnel or passage enabling pedestrians to cross a road or railway
british
An underground walkway, tunnel for pedestrians (called pedestrian underpass in US).
An underground route for pipes, sewers, etc.
An underground route for creatures (e.g. bats).
canadaus
A rapid transit system, regardless of the elevation of its right of way; a metro system.
verb
intransitiveusinformal
To travel by underground railway.
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.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An underground tunnel or passage enabling pedestrians to cross a road or railway
Used this way, subway is a word tied to one variety of English that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. Most speakers understand it but seldom reach for it.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Regional
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Uncommon in everyday speech
Usage note
Mainly used in British English, so it may read as unusual elsewhere.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use subway
- “In Paris the subway system is called the `metro' and in London it is called the `tube' or the `underground'”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The fare charged for riding a subway train.
A terminal where subways load and unload passengers.
An electric railway operating below the surface of the ground (usually in a city).
A token that is used to pay for entry to the subway system.
A train that runs in a subway system.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
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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.