Rail vs Fail - What's the difference?
rail | fail |
A horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing.
* , chapter=7
, title= The metal bar that makes the track for a railroad.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838
, page=13 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist)
, title= A railroad; a railway.
A horizontal piece of wood that serves to separate sections of a door or window.
(surfing) One of the lengthwise edges of a surfboard.
* Nick Carroll, surfline.com [http://www.surfline.com/community/whoknows/10_21_rails.cfm]:
To travel by railway.
* Rudyard Kipling
To enclose with rails or a railing.
* Ayliffe
To range in a line.
* Francis Bacon
To complain violently ((against), (about)).
* {{quote-news
, year=2012
, date=June 4
, author=Lewis Smith
, title=Queen's English Society says enuf is enough, innit?
, work=the Guardian
* 1994 , Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom , Abacus 2010, p. 27:
(obsolete) An item of clothing; a cloak or other garment; a dress.
(obsolete) Specifically, a woman's headscarf or neckerchief.
(label) To gush, flow (of liquid).
*, Bk.V, Ch.iv:
*:his breste and his brayle was bloodé – and hit rayled all over the see.
*1596 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , IV.2:
*:So furiously each other did assayle, / As if their soules they would attonce haue rent / Out of their brests, that streames of bloud did rayle / Adowne, as if their springes of life were spent.
(label) To be unsuccessful.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= (label) Not to achieve a particular stated goal. (Usage note: The direct object of this word is usually an infinitive.)
(label) To neglect.
To cease to operate correctly.
(label) To be wanting to, to be insufficient for, to disappoint, to desert.
* Bible, 1 Kings ii. 4
* 1843 , (Thomas Carlyle), '', book 3, ch. II, ''Gospel of Mammonism
*
, title=The Mirror and the Lamp
, chapter=2 (label) To receive one or more non-passing grades in academic pursuits.
(label) To give a student a non-passing grade in an academic endeavour.
To miss attaining; to lose.
* Milton
To be wanting; to fall short; to be or become deficient in any measure or degree up to total absence.
* Bible, Job xiv. 11
* Shakespeare
(archaic) To be affected with want; to come short; to lack; to be deficient or unprovided; used with of .
* Berke
(archaic) To fall away; to become diminished; to decline; to decay; to sink.
* Milton
(archaic) To deteriorate in respect to vigour, activity, resources, etc.; to become weaker.
(obsolete) To perish; to die; used of a person.
* Shakespeare
(obsolete) To err in judgment; to be mistaken.
* Milton
To become unable to meet one's engagements; especially, to be unable to pay one's debts or discharge one's business obligation; to become bankrupt or insolvent.
(uncountable) (label) Poor quality; substandard workmanship.
(label) A failure (condition of being unsuccessful)
A failure (something incapable of success)
A failure, especially of a financial transaction (a termination of an action).
A failing grade in an academic examination.
As nouns the difference between rail and fail
is that rail is a horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing or rail can be any of several birds in the family rallidae or rail can be (obsolete) an item of clothing; a cloak or other garment; a dress while fail is .As a verb rail
is to travel by railway or rail can be to complain violently ((against), (about)) or rail can be (label) to gush, flow (of liquid).rail
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) (m), (m), ; see regular.Noun
(en noun)Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=Old Applegate, in the stern, just set and looked at me, and Lord James, amidship, waved both arms and kept hollering for help. I took a couple of everlasting big strokes and managed to grab hold of the skiff's rail , close to the stern.}}
Ideas coming down the track, passage=A “moving platform” scheme
- Rails alone can only ever have a marginal effect on a board's general turning ability.
Derived terms
* guardrail * handrail * live rail * railcard * railfanning * railhead * railway * ride the rails * split rail * third railVerb
(en verb)- Mottram of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from his lonely post in the desert
- It ought to be fenced in and railed .
- They were brought to London all railed in ropes, like a team of horses in a cart.
Etymology 2
(etyl) .Usage notes
Not all birds in the family Rallidae are rails by their common name. The family also includes coots]], moorhens, crakes, flufftails, [[waterhen, waterhens and others.Derived terms
* banded railSee also
* corncrakeEtymology 3
From (etyl) railler.Verb
(en verb)citation, page= , passage=The Queen may be celebrating her jubilee but the Queen's English Society, which has railed against the misuse and deterioration of the English language, is to fold.}}
- Chief Joyi railed against the white man, whom he believed had deliberately sundered the Xhosa tribe, dividing brother from brother.
Etymology 4
From (etyl) (m), (m), from (etyl) .Alternative forms
*Noun
(en noun)- (Fairholt)
Derived terms
* night-railEtymology 5
Probably from (etyl) raier, (etyl) raier.Verb
(en verb)Anagrams
* * * * * * English terms with multiple etymologies ----fail
English
Verb
(en verb)A new prescription, passage=As the world’s drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one.}}
- There shall not fail thee a man on the throne.
- A poor Irish Widow […] went forth with her three children, bare of all resource, to solicit help from the Charitable Establishments of that City. At this Charitable Establishment and then at that she was refused; referred from one to the other, helped by none; — till she had exhausted them all; till her strength and heart failed her: she sank down in typhus-fever […]
citation, passage=That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired. And if the arts of humbleness failed him, he overcame you by sheer impudence.}}
- though that seat of earthly bliss be failed
- The crops failed last year.
- as the waters fail from the sea
- Till Lionel's issue fails , his should not reign.
- If ever they fail of beauty, this failure is not be attributed to their size.
- When earnestly they seek / Such proof, conclude they then begin to fail .
- A sick man fails .
- had the king in his last sickness failed
- Which ofttimes may succeed, so as perhaps / Shall grieve him, if I fail not.
Usage notes
* This is a catenative verb which takes the to infinitive . SeeSynonyms
* (to be unsuccessful) fall on one's faceAntonyms
* (to be unsuccessful) succeedDerived terms
* failure * fail-safeNoun
- The project was full of fail .