railing

Pluralrailings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A fence or barrier made of one or more horizontal rails supported by vertical posts.

   The balcony railing had rusted through in several places.

   Workers installed a new railing along the bridge walkway.

   Similarbalustrade, banister, barrier, fence, handrail

   Note

   Often plural when it means a whole run of fencing: wrought-iron railings around a courtyard, or the railings everyone lost in wartime when they were taken away to make bombers. The noun sits beside the verb rail in its fencing sense, "to enclose with rails or a railing." It also shares its spelling with the complaining adjectives, so only context tells a balcony railing from a railing critic.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of rail.

   The senator spent the morning railing against corruption in the press.

   Railing at fate accomplished nothing for the stranded crew.

   Note

   Several verbs spelled rail stand behind this form: travelers railing across the country, workers railing a garden to enclose it, and the bitter-complaint verb that takes against or at. After be it forms the progressive (was railing against corruption). In noun positions it is a gerund (railing at fate). Before a noun naming a person, the same spelling is usually the adjective for complainers.

3. 3
   adjective

   Engaged in or given to violent, angry complaining.

   Her railing aunt found fault with every guest at the party.

   A railing reformer, he denounced his colleagues in every meeting.

   Similarcarping, censorious, querulous

   Oppositeuncomplaining

   Note

   A participle hardened into an adjective, rail plus -ing, that describes a person by habit rather than by a single outburst. Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The CoxComb (1647) asks why "that railing man" comes along, and modern writers on invective still speak of the railing woman. It sits before a noun naming a person, while the sense for invective itself describes speeches and styles.

4. 4
   adjective

   Marked by abusive language and bitter, vehement complaining against someone or something.

   The editorial was a railing tirade against the new policy.

   Railing pamphlets circulated, each one packed with insults and grievances.

   Similarvitriolic, abusive, vituperative, scathing, denunciatory

   Oppositelaudatory, complimentary, approving

   Note

   Here the railing is in the words, not the speaker: railing speeches, a railing style, railing pamphlets. David Cressy's Dangerous Talk (2010) recalls "very railing speeches against the justices" made in Terling, Essex, in 1608, and Maria Teresa Micaela Prendergast writes of the railing style of the Poets' War. Use it for texts and talk. For the person behind them, use the sense for habitual complainers.

5. 5
   adjective

   Blowing with great force and violence.

   A railing gale battered the lighthouse for three days.

   They huddled below deck as the railing wind howled overhead.

   Similarhowling, raging, violent, fierce, furious

   Oppositegentle, light

   Note

   Weather borrows the scold's voice here, so that wind and storm rail as an angry speaker does. The word pairs with wind and storm, from the Odes of Anacreon (1820), "scatter to the railing wind", and Alfred Austin's The Garden that I Love (1906) to Once Upon a Christmas (2015). It suits verse and descriptive prose more than plain reporting.

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