rail-splitter
Americannoun
-
a person or thing that splits logs into rails, especially for fences.
-
Rail-splitter, nickname of Abraham Lincoln.
Etymology
Origin of rail-splitter
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Here is the quintessential Westerner about to transform himself from Honest Abe the rail-splitter into Father Abraham, the avuncular statesman capable of handling the looming crisis over disunion and slavery.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
He grew up a rail-splitter clearing land on the frontier.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 11, 2022
Smith is likened to Honest Abe, the humble rail-splitter who overturned the slave power by announcing the axiomatic truth of human equality.
From New York Times ● Mar. 30, 2021
The populist mythology surrounding Abraham Lincoln was not only the rail-splitter born in a log cabin, but the youth who studied books by candlelight.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 21, 2016
Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil, and confute my pen:— To make me own this man of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.
From Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday A Comprehensive View of Lincoln as Given in the Most Noteworthy Essays, Orations and Poems, in Fiction and in Lincoln's Own Writings by Schauffler, Robert Haven
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
