railroading
[reyl-roh-ding]
Origin of railroading
railroad
[reyl-rohd]
- a permanent road laid with rails, commonly in one or more pairs of continuous lines forming a track or tracks, on which locomotives and cars are run for the transportation of passengers, freight, and mail.
- an entire system of such roads together with its rolling stock, buildings, etc.; the entire railway plant, including fixed and movable property.
- the company of persons owning or operating such a plant.
- Bowling. a split.
- railroads, stocks or bonds of railroad companies.
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- to transport by means of a railroad.
- to supply with railroads.
- Informal. to push (a law or bill) hastily through a legislature so that there is not time enough for objections to be considered.
- Informal. to convict (a person) in a hasty manner by means of false charges or insufficient evidence: The prisoner insisted he had been railroaded.
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- to work on a railroad.
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Origin of railroad
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
detainjailconfineimprisonsentenceholdurgesueforceworrydemandpushassailsqueezepetitiondepresspropelshovelaunchbumpExamples from the Web for railroading
Contemporary Examples
The most direct mail route was not the one best suited for human travel in a time when railroading was still in its infancy.
By railroading the McDonnells and Joneses of the world out of public life, we're left with colorless numbskulls.
Historical Examples
We love to run past the signals, in our railroading and in our thinking.
The American MindBliss Perry
At any rate we'll have to call off railroading for to-night, for if you are not sleepy, I am.
Steve and the Steam EngineSara Ware Bassett
That was real railroading, the top-notch of railroading, too.
It is the same in railroading—or anything else, for that matter.
At one time, from 1849 to 1855, I was engaged in railroading.
railroad
- the usual US word for railway
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- (tr) informal to force (a person) into (an action) with haste or by unfair means
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for railroading
n.
1842, "travel by rail," from railroad (n.). As "business of running railways" from 1882.
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railroad
n.
1757, from rail (n.1) + road. Originally "road laid with rails for heavy wagons (in mining)." The process itself (but not the word) seems to have been in use by late 17c. Application to passenger and freight trains dates from 1825, though tending to be replaced in this sense in England by railway.
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railroad
v.
"to convict quickly and perhaps unjustly," 1873, American English, from railroad (n.).
A person knowing more than might be desirable of the affairs, or perhaps the previous life of some powerful individual, high in authority, might some day ventilate his knowledge, possibly before a court of justice; but if his wisdom is railroaded to State's prison, his evidence becomes harmless. ["Wanderings of a Vagabond," New York, 1873]
Related: Railroaded; railroading. An earlier verb sense was "to have a mania for building railroads" (1847).
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper