Noun

(head)

(rail transport, British) Movable rails which can be used to switch a train from one railway track to another.

(automotive) The two metal surfaces in a distributor which close or open to allow current to flow or not through the ignition coil. Each surface is called a point singular (there's usually a moving point which is pushed by the distributor cam and a fixed point which isn't), but they're made together in a unit and serviced or replaced that way and are hence normally called points plural.

Noun

(-)

English plurals

(plural only) The timbers of shipyard stocks that slope into the water and along which a ship or large boat is launched.

* {{quote-book

, year=1912 , year_published= , edition= , editor= , author=Fredrick A. Talbot , title=Steamship Conquest of the World , chapter= citation , genre= , publisher= , isbn= , page=36 , passage= By the time the Mauretania was ready for launching a total weight of 16,800 tons was standing in the berth, and this represented the heaviest weight that had ever been sent down the ways up to that time. }}

(plural only) The longitudinal guiding surfaces on the bed of a planer, lathe, etc. along which a table or carriage moves.

(informal) A distance.

* 2007, Aryn Kyle, The God of Animals , Simon and Schuster, ISBN 1416533249, page 41,

“We still have a ways to go with patterns.”

“You still have a ways to go with everything,” I told him.