Word.ws English Dictionary

trainspotting

trainspotting is the alternative spelling of train spotting.

Meaning of train spotting

Noun

train spotting (uncountable)

  1. The hobby of collecting the numbers and names of locomotives seen at railway stations and other vantage points.
    • One of my friends, the one who wept, did vow he'd never visit a bird observatory again and went back to train-spotting.1983, Bill Oddie, Gone Birding, London: Methuen, page 108
  2. The obsessive following of any minority interest or hobby.
    • […] trainspotting mentality that thrives on the minutiae of whatever field with little regard for any contextual relevance such detail may have to the wider picture.2001, International Record Review, volume 2, page 92

Questions about trainspotting

What is trainspotting the alternative spelling of?
Trainspotting is the alternative spelling of train spotting.

Words near trainspotting in the dictionary

  1. trainspotted
  2. trainspotter
  3. trainspotterish
  4. trainspotters
  5. trainspottery
  6. trainspotting
  7. trainstop
  8. trainstops
  9. traintime
  10. traintimes
  11. trainward

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: trainspotting (page history and authors); train spotting (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: “trainspotting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trainspotting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.