railroad
Americannoun
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railroads
plural
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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.
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an entire system of such roads together with its rolling stock, buildings, etc.; the entire railway plant, including fixed and movable property.
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the company of persons owning or operating such a plant.
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Bowling. a split.
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railroads, stocks or bonds of railroad companies.
verb (used with object)
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railroads,
present (3rd person singular)
-
railroaded,
past participle, past
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railroading
present participle
-
to transport by means of a railroad.
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to supply with railroads.
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Informal. to push (a law or bill) hastily through a legislature so that there is not time enough for objections to be considered.
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Informal. to convict (a person) in a hasty manner by means of false charges or insufficient evidence.
The prisoner insisted he had been railroaded.
verb (used without object)
-
railroads,
present (3rd person singular)
-
railroaded,
past participle, past
-
railroading
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
railroadsimple
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railroadssimple
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have railroadedperfect
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has railroadedperfect
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am railroadingprogressive
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are railroadingprogressive
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is railroadingprogressive
-
have been railroadingperfect progressive
-
has been railroadingperfect progressive
Past
-
railroadedsimple
-
had railroadedperfect
-
was railroadingprogressive
-
were railroadingprogressive
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had been railroadingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of railroad
1750–60; 1875–85 railroad for def. 9; rail 1 + road
Explanation
The system of tracks that trains run on can be called a railroad. A railroad is made up of the actual tracks, crossings, and stations, as well as the people who keep the trains running and scream, "All aboard!" If you prefer traveling by railroad, you like to ride trains, whether to the next town over or all the way across the country. Many railroad tracks in the US are used for freight trains that deliver goods around the country. When railroad is a verb, it can mean "move by train," but it's more likely to mean "force or coerce someone to do something," like when you railroad your brother into taking out the trash for you.
Vocabulary lists containing railroad
The Industrial Revolution - Introductory
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The Industrial Revolution - Middle School and High School
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History of India - Introductory
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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.
See Examples For:
In inflation-adjusted terms, the AI sector is expected to borrow more this year than US cable operators did to build out the entire internet, or than railroad companies did during the 19th-century US rail boom.
From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026
Last month Bo French, Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, posted a photo on social media of Asian students at the University of Texas at Austin celebrating the football team’s victory over Ohio State.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
The family of prominent railroad and oil tycoon Daniel Murphy donated it after his death and the Church leased it to oil developers beginning in the 1960s.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2026
She described her parents, a railroad worker and a mother who once cleaned houses, as “Depression-era Democrats.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026
Reinhold Barth, Dasch's relative and Kappe's right-hand man, had worked for the Long Island Rail Road in America, and he gave them a tour of a railroad plant and yards.
From Nazi Saboteurs by Samantha Seiple
The IMF has said that the amount invested in AI will likely outstrip the capital put into building the railroads, the electricity grid or global telecommunications networks.
From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2026
The industrialists of the 19th and 20th centuries made their fortunes on new markets like oil, steel and railroads.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026
With California’s coast getting pounded by strong waves amid a strengthening El Niño, residents and city leaders are turning to big rocks and seawalls to protect homes and keep railroads from falling into the sea.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
That is the highest since mid-2022, when prices soared amid the supply-chain disruptions resulting from the Covid pandemic that led to insufficient inventory, labor shortages and bottlenecks at ports and railroads.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026
He had a passion for trains—his office was littered with books about the history of railroads, model locomotives, paintings of trains trundling on tracks through green hills and over bridges.
From "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
The Clippers are howling in protest, vehemently rejecting the league’s conclusions and stating they’ve been railroaded by a “heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
They also trusted the word of McBride, who has made a name for himself nationally as an outspoken — and controversial — advocate for officers who believe they’ve been railroaded by their departments.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2024
Like other actors including Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino, Julia Ormond, briefly a major star in the 1990s, has alleged in a lawsuit that Weinstein railroaded her career.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 25, 2024
But a group of faculty members rallied to support her, arguing that she was being railroaded for a moment of poorly worded remarks about antisemitism.
From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2023
If I had been railroaded, the authorities would have known how I’d gotten it.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
Call off the swarms of lawyers and PR handlers, the howling about railroading and witch hunts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
Unlike Derry’s pubs, it welcomed everybody and also secretly provided a safe refuge for Hank as he hid from the cops intent on railroading him.
From Salon ● Dec. 8, 2025
“When the Mexican Revolution was going on, you had a lot of Mexican immigrants coming into these railroading hubs and centers like the Inland Empire, like San Bernardino,” Ocegueda said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2025
At its core, precision scheduled railroading aims to produce better results with less work.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 26, 2024
They launched into a long discussion of their memories, both of railroading and of the Sierras.
From "Dragonwings" by Laurence Yep
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.
