railways

noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“railways” is uncommon French (frequency #80,569 among 5,742 “R” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#80,569
frequency rank, French
5,742
“R” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Pluriel de railway.

Corpus desk

Index FR-railways · railways · French

railways · rank #80,569 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #80,569
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,742
  • PHOTO-FINISH radioélectriq…

Nearest frequency peer: radioélectriques (-1 rank slots)

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.

Rangs de longue queue près de « railways »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « railways » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for railways
PropertyValue
Headwordrailways
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
Letters8
Frequency rank#80,569
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « railways » en français

De gauche à droite: le peu qui porte la parole quotidienne, puis la longue queue quasi invisible.railwaystombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Voisins rares de la même bande: « radioélectriques » (#80,568), « rachètera » (#80,567), « Ramadi » (#80,571). Parmi 5,742 lemmes en « R », « railways » est au #80,569. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

railways is uncommon French at frequency #80,569 among 5,742 “R” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Pluriel de railway.".

No generated misspelling entries exist for railways in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.

Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is railways, spelled R-A-I-L-W-A-Y-S.

Definition

  1. 1
    Pluriel de railway.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how railways appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Empruntons une image aux railways, ne fût-ce que par façon de remboursement des emprunts qu’ils nous font.
  2. Un effroyable accident avait eu lieu, non une rencontre de trains, mais un déraillement et une chute qui rappelaient les plus graves désastres des railways américains.

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "railways"?
"railways" is spelled R-A-I-L-W-A-Y-S.
What does "railways" mean?
As a noun, "railways" means: Pluriel de railway.
What language does "railways" come from?
"railways" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "railways", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

qualifia#80,558recentré#80,581purifiés#80,555présidés#80,549

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list