Past tense of rail
regular verb
The past tense of rail is railed. The past participle is also railed.
Forms of rail
| Base form (V1) | rail /ɹeɪ(ə)l/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | railed |
| Past participle (V3) | railed |
| Present participle | railing /ˈɹeɪlɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | rails /ɹeɪlz/ |
Railed in a sentence
- Chief Joyi railed against the white man, whom he believed had deliberately sundered the Xhosa tribe, dividing brother from brother.1994, Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London: Abacus, published 2010, page 27
- 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.2012 June 4, Lewis Smith, “Queen’s English Society says enuf is enough, innit?: Society formed 40 years ago to protect language against...
- The Five Star Movement has long railed against carpetbagging, but for all of Ms.2018 February 23, Jason Horowitz, “Italy’s ‘Five Star’ Grows Up Into a Real Party, Scandals and All”, in New York Times. From the entry carpetbag
- Mother and son went into the small railed garden, where was a scent of red gillivers.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 6”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC. From the entry gilliver
- Other speakers railed against “neo-liberal dogma”; but a dogma is a belief that you hold regardless of evidence.2023 May 20, Daniel Hannan, “The Conservative coalition is falling apart. Too many Tories have given up on freedom”, in The Telegraph, →ISSN. From the entry pragma
Meaning of rail
- noun A horizontal bar extending between supports and used for support or as a barrier; a railing.
- noun The metal bar forming part of the track for a railroad.
- noun A railroad; a railway, as a means of transportation.
Questions about the past tense of rail
- What is the past tense of rail?
- The past tense of rail is railed.
- What is the past participle of rail?
- The past participle of rail is railed.
- Is rail a regular or irregular verb?
- Rail is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rail (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of rail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/rail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.