Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A track or way for trams, as in a mine.
- n. Chiefly British A streetcar line.
- n. A cable or system of cables for a cable car.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A light or temporary railroad, as for the transportation of logs, often with wooden rails and operated by horse-power.
- n. A gutter attached to a pool-table, dsigned to save time in gathering the dead or pocketed balls. It is now, in improved form, attached to the under side of tables used in other pocket games.
- n. The earliest form of railroad. It consisted at first of trains of wood or fiat stones, at a later period of wooden stringers covered with strap-iron, and lastly of iron rails. The first tramways were simply rude horse-railroads for the transportation of heavy freight. The term is now applied to all kinds of street-railroads, whether using engines, horses, a cable, or electricity.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Same as tramroad.
- n. A street railway laid in the streets of a town or city, or an interurban railway for local traffic, on which cable cars, or trolley cars, etc., are used, in distinction from an extended railway line for trains drawn by steam or electric locomotives.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the track on which trams or streetcars run
- n. a conveyance that transports passengers or freight in carriers suspended from cables and supported by a series of towers
Etymologies
- tram + way (Wiktionary)
Examples
“I sat back down defiantly, picked up my blue pencil, and circled the word tramway.”
“An elevated tramway is built from the town to Victoria Gap, 1,100 feet above the sea.”
“Beyond the tramway was a grove of yellow-looking firs; beyond the grove a range of white houses with blue roofs, occupied, I suppose, by miners and their families; and beyond these”
“The tramway was a cable which stretched from a wooden tower set upon a stone pillar jutting from the sea to a similar tower built upon the land.”
“It was a very long line, compared to any railway that had yet been constructed; but it was still only to be worked by horse-power -- to be, in fact, what we now call a tramway, rather than a railway in the modern sense.”
“Although Armenian authorities said that they will apply to Guinness World Records to officially confirm that the tramway is the world's longest, they say it was primarily built for practical use.”
“Ridership on public transit, spearheaded by a reinvention of the 'tramway' (streetcar or LRT), did a complete U-Turn.”
“And so I take the aerial tramway down the north side, the cable car floating like a sun-filled bubble into dense cloud to the station of Fräkmüntegg, developed as a sort of mid-mountain adventure theme park.”
The Huffington Post: Richard Bangs: Here Be Dragons: Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland, Part 3
“And so I take the aerial tramway down the north side, the cable car floating like a sun-filled bubble into dense cloud to the station of Fräkmüntegg, developed as a sort of mid-mountain adventure theme park.”
The Huffington Post: Richard Bangs: Here Be Dragons: Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland, Part 3
“Here is the story of that tramway with lots of old pictures.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tramway’.
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Visuals
A list of words which yield surprising, beautiful, amusing, or otherwise noteworthy images here on Wordnik.
photochrom, fufluns, thank you, cool l..., postcard, picture postcard, cricket, physiological ill..., Gakuryū Ishii, ametropia, One Froggy Evening, rhodopsin, Santiago Calatrava and 636 more...
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TRAN - rail transport
light rail, railway, rail safety, railway line, monorail, railway network, high-speed rail, rolling stock, rail transport, rail freight tran..., funicular railway, tramline and 3 more...
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WF - nominal compounds (concrete)
foodstuff, banknote, crankshaft, earphone, fibreboard, fishplate, forklift, glassware, guardrail, handicraft, headband, kitchenware and 181 more...
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
veal, valve, used, yak, wax, wan, teak, vat, vas, strip, use, strap and 4515 more...
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ways
some of all the ways - always -in every way
way off beam, third way, way of the pilgrim, four way stop, right of way, wrong of way, by the way, way-pane, way to go, way off broadway, way out west, under way and 100 more...
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ways
As in routes, avenues & tracts. Omitting, e.g., halfway, anyway, sideways, folkway, Haddaway. (many of those are found thisways)
alleyway, Broadway, highway, hatchway, archway, thruway, railway, doorway, runway, skyway, hallway, shaftway and 79 more...
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Rillons of Random Palavery
A list for terms and phrases that I haven't (yet) entered into themed lists, including my series of various 151-word Random Palavery lists. Constructions that catch my eye, ring in my ears, tease m...
ridge cucumber, co-CEO, debt worry, jackalope bustiere, gimblette, ring-biscuit, cobnut, poussoir, praire, coque rayée, rigadelle, coing and 1459 more...
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Permutations
There are 17576 different sequences of three letters (26 x 26 x 26). How many of them occur in words? General rules of engagement: mononyms only, lower case preferred to upper case, short preferred...
aaargh, niqaabi, Isaac, raad, baaed, haaf, laager, aah, kamaaina, Naajaat, aak, aalii and 637 more...
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teach me this word
conflate, eloquence, eloquent, ephemeral, erstwhile, fetching, lissome, offing, redolent, berceuse, reverie, veracity and 23 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tramway.
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