subway

Pluralsubways

Formssubways, subwaying, subwayed

1. 1
   noundialectalCanadaScotlandSouth AfricaUScountable

   An underground railway, especially one used for moving large numbers of people through a city.

   Millions of commuters ride the subway beneath the city each day.

   A new subway line will connect the airport to the city center.

   Similarmetro, underground, tube

   Note

   Here English splits by region. In American, Canadian, Scottish and South African use, the word means the railway beneath the streets, while British English keeps it for the pedestrian tunnel. London once tried it: in 1884 a syndicate promoted 'The City of London & Southwark Subway', and Andrew Martin notes that the word sounded more sophisticated than underground railway. The everyday patterns are take the subway and go by subway.

2. 2
   noundialectalCanadaScotlandSouth AfricaUScountable

   A train that travels along a city's underground railway line.

   The last subway of the night left the platform just after midnight.

   Two subways collided in the tunnel during the morning rush.

   Note

   Here the word moves from the network to the vehicle on it, so a subway can arrive, stop and leave: "the subway comes. You get on," Russel Baker writes in The New York Times in 1981. Context separates the two meanings. Take the subway usually means the system, and the next subway means the train. Only this sense counts naturally, so two subways on the line means two trains.

3. 3
   nounCanadaUScountable

   A rapid transit system for a city, regardless of whether its tracks run underground or above the ground; a metro system.

   Much of the city's subway actually runs on elevated tracks above the avenues.

   Planners proposed extending the subway out to the suburban districts.

   Similarmetro

   Note

   The name has outgrown its prefix. It was built from sub- + way, but in Canadian and US use it can cover a whole rapid transit system, including stretches on elevated track or at street level. A line on stilts above the avenues still belongs to the subway, which sets this use apart from the strictly underground railway. Metro is its closest equivalent.

4. 4
   nounBritishcountable

   An underground walkway or tunnel that lets pedestrians pass beneath a road or railway.

   Pedestrians can reach the far platform through the subway beneath the tracks.

   The council painted bright murals along the subway to make it feel safer.

   Similarunderpass, tunnel

   Note

   A British railway word as much as a street one: the passage that takes passengers beneath the tracks from one platform to another. Railway Magazine in 1950 describes Nairobi's island platform joined to the main one by a subway, and Stephen Roberts in 2021 heads "beneath the tracks via the subway" at Didcot. American readers should note that a station subway here is a footway, not a train.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   An underground passage or route that carries pipes, sewers, and similar service lines.

   Engineers inspected the subway carrying the city's water mains.

   The old brick subway still houses gas and electric lines.

   Similartunnel, conduit

6. 6
   verbcolloquialUSintransitive

   To get around a city by riding the underground railway.

   On weekdays she prefers to subway rather than sit in traffic.

   We subwayed up to the museum and walked the rest of the way.

   Note

   A verb made straight from the noun, and an informal one. It takes no object, only a direction: subway around town, subway up to the museum. Its forms are regular (subwayed, subwaying), as in Melissa Clark's "I suppose I could have subwayed around town" in The New York Times in 2008. In more careful writing, take the subway does the same job.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   An underground route used by animals such as bats to travel between places.

   Researchers tracked the colony through a subway linking two caves.

   The badgers had dug a subway connecting their burrows.

   Similartunnel, passage

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