Word.ws English Dictionary

on the rail

on the rail is the alternative form of on the rails.

Meaning of on the rails

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) In working order, functioning properly.
    • To The wineplace.com and Chris, Marshy and Chris for keeping me on the rails.2000, Paul Clarke, Learning Schools, Learning Systems, →ISBN, page vii
  2. In a train or on trains.
    • For several Saturdays after he'd seen a film about men who lived on the rails, he left home with a Spam sandwich in a paper bag, a compass and a ball of twine (though he wasn't sure why he included the twine).2005, Dan Gerber, A Voice from the River: A Novel, →ISBN, page 14
  3. Racing toward the inside, near the fence that bounds the track.
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see on, rail.
    • The larger the wheels, the less will any dust, twigs, or inequalities on the rails affect them.1830, Thomas Earle, A Treatise on Railroads and Internal Communications, etc, page 54

Questions about on the rail

What is on the rail the alternative form of?
On the rail is the alternative form of on the rails.

Words near on the rail in the dictionary

  1. on the qui vive
  2. on the quiet
  3. on the rack
  4. on the radar
  5. on the rag
  6. on the rail
  7. on the rails
  8. on the rampage
  9. on the ran tan
  10. on the raw
  11. on the razz

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the rail (page history and authors); on the rails (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “on the rail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_rail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.