Word.ws English Dictionary

way station

way station noun: a small railway station between the principal stations or a station where the train stops only on a signal.

Noun

way station (plural way stations)

  1. A small railway station between the principal stations or a station where the train stops only on a signal.
  2. (figuratively) A service area or temporary lodging used during a longer journey.
    • At one of the way-stations on his long journey a barmaid at a tavern speaks to Gilgamesh and tries to give him common sense on the human condition.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 201

Synonyms of way station

Forms of way station

pluralway stations
alternative formway-station
alternative formwaystation

Questions about way station

What does way station mean?
Way station means a small railway station between the principal stations or a station where the train stops only on a signal.
What part of speech is way station?
Way station is a noun.
What is the plural of way station?
The plural of way station is way stations.

Words near way station in the dictionary

  1. way out
  2. way out of a paper bag
  3. way out of a wet paper bag
  4. way passenger
  5. way passengers
  6. way station
  7. way stations
  8. way thistle
  9. way thistles
  10. way to
  11. way to go

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: way station (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: “way station.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/way_station. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.