Railing
adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A fence or barrier consisting of one or more horizontal rails and vertical supports.
"During the war, everyone's railings were taken away to make bombers."
- 2 a barrier consisting of a horizontal bar and supports wordnet
- 3 material for making rails or rails collectively wordnet
- 1 present participle and gerund of rail form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 1 That rails; engaged in or given to violent complaining.
"Why does that railing man go with us?"
- 2 Filled with invective and violent complaints
"Petrus de Pilichdorf (in the year 1395, as he himself gives the date, cap 30,) writes a book of confutation of the several pretended errors of the Waldenses of this time in thirty-six chapters, but has nothing of baptism; though he descends to speak of many lesser matters, and aggravates all with very railing words, yet he finds nothing to accuse them of, but such things as the protestants now hold, except one or two, as the 'unlawfulness of 'all oaths,' &c."
- 3 Blowing violently.
"But scatter to the railing wind Each gloomy phantom of the mind!"
Example
More examples"State police spokeswoman Janet Welp says the truck wound up crashing into a bridge railing along Interstate 30."
Etymology
By surface analysis, rail + -ing.
Related phrases
More for "railing"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.