ride the rods
ride the rods verb: to travel illicitly by clinging to the supporting rods under a freight train.
Verb
ride the rods (third-person singular simple present rides the rods, present participle riding the rods, simple past rode the rods, past participle ridden the rods)
- To travel illicitly by clinging to the supporting rods under a freight train.
- And a dangerous extracurricular activity had helped turn his muscles to iron: he “rode the rods” with other boys, clinging to the underframework of Union Pacific freight cars rumbling through Abilene.1970, Colonel Red Reeder, Dinosaurs A to Z, published 2008
- I nearly ran right into one jabbing his shotgun underneath the car, checking to see if somebody was under there riding the rods.2007, Rilla Askew, Harpsong
Forms of ride the rods
| third-person singular present | rides the rods |
|---|---|
| present participle | riding the rods |
| past | rode the rods |
| past participle | ridden the rods |
Questions about ride the rods
- What does ride the rods mean?
- Ride the rods means to travel illicitly by clinging to the supporting rods under a freight train.
- What part of speech is ride the rods?
- Ride the rods is a verb.
- What is the past tense of ride the rods?
- The past tense of ride the rods is rode the rods.
Words near ride the rods in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ride the rods (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: “ride the rods.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ride_the_rods. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.