Webster
✕

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Railroad

Rail′road′ (rāl′rōd′), Rail′way′ (- wā′), n. 1. A road or way consisting of one or more parallel series of iron or steel rails, patterned and adjusted to be tracks for the wheels of vehicles, and suitably supported on a bed or substructure.

☞ The modern railroad is a development and adaptation of the older tramway.

2. The road, track, etc., with all the lands, buildings, rolling stock, franchises, etc., pertaining to them and constituting one property; as, a certain railroad has been put into the hands of a receiver.

☞ Railway is the commoner word in England; railroad the commoner word in the United States.

☞ In the following and similar phrases railroad and railway are used interchangeably: —

Atmospheric railway, Elevated railway, etc. See under Atmospheric, Elevated, etc. — Cable railway. See Cable road, under Cable. — Ferry railway, a submerged track on which an elevated platform runs, for carrying a train of cars across a water course. — Gravity railway, a railway, in a hilly country, on which the cars run by gravity down gentle slopes for long distances after having been hauled up steep inclines to an elevated point by stationary engines. — Railway brake, a brake used in stopping railway cars or locomotives. — Railway car, a large, heavy vehicle with flanged wheels fitted for running on a railway. [U.S.] — Railway carriage, a railway passenger car. [Eng.] — Railway scale, a platform scale bearing a track which forms part of the line of a railway, for weighing loaded cars. — Railway slide. See Transfer table, under Transfer. — Railway spine (Med.), an abnormal condition due to severe concussion of the spinal cord, such as occurs in railroad accidents. It is characterized by ataxia and other disturbances of muscular function, sensory disorders, pain in the back, impairment of general health, and cerebral disturbance, — the symptoms often not developing till some months after the injury. — Underground railroad or railway. (a) A railroad or railway running through a tunnel, as beneath the streets of a city. (b) Formerly, a system of coöperation among certain active antislavery people in the United States, by which fugitive slaves were secretly helped to reach Canada. [In the latter sense railroad, and not railway, was used.] "Their house was a principal entrepôt of the underground railroad." W. D. Howells.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.