signal box
"signal-box" is a 9-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“signal box” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 10
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A building, typically adjacent to or spanning a railway line, from where signals, points and (sometimes) level crossings are controlled.
Corpus desk
Index EN-signal-box · signal box · English
signal box · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 10 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "S" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | signal box |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 10 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “signal box” in English
Rare enough to double-check
signal box is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
signal box has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is signal box, spelled S-I-G-N-A-L- -B-O-X.
Definition
- 1A building, typically adjacent to or spanning a railway line, from where signals, points and (sometimes) level crossings are controlled.
- 2The alarm-box of a police or fire alarm system.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how signal box appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
This includes plans to run earlier [Sunday] services on the Derby to Crewe and Skegness routes, which will require Network Rail to open signal boxes on these lines earlier than at present.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.