train

noun

1. Elongated or trailing portion.

   “Unfortunately, the leading bridesmaid stepped on the bride's train as they were walking down the aisle.”

   “They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set [...].”

   “He was generally seen trooping like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold up with one hand, as a lady does her train in bad weather.”

   “Lace sleeves, a demure neckline, a full skirt and a relatively modest train.”

2. Elongated or trailing portion.

   “[E]mancipation is put into such a train that in a few years there will be no slaves Northward of Maryland.”

   “A party was sent to search, and there they found all the powder ready prepared, and, moreover, a man with a lantern, one Guy Fawkes, who had undertaken to be the one to set fire to the train of gunpowder, hoping to escape before the explosion.”

3. Elongated or trailing portion.

   “Let frantike Talbot triumph for a while, And like a Peacock ſweepe along his tayle, Wee’le pull his Plumes, and take away his Trayne, If Dolphin and the reſt will be but rul’d.”

   “The burning evening sun lighted with mellow gold the coats of the fierce little tiger-kittens — orange silk with stripes of black velvet — the broken amethysts and ruined emeralds of the poor bird's train cruelly scattered over the trampled grass”

   “Fawn and pearl of the lyre-bird's train, / Sheen of the bronze-wing, blue of the crane; / Cream of the plover, grey of the dove; / These are the hues of the land I love!”

   “Before the Spanish Conquest, the long, slender, green plumes of the male bird's train adorned the headgear of Aztec and Mayan kings and chieftains, as one may clearly see in modern restorations of ancient scenes.”

4. (obsolete)Elongated or trailing portion.
5. (poetic)Elongated or trailing portion.
6. Elongated or trailing portion.

   “Finally, all men saw that astronomical knowledge lied not, and they awaited the comet. Its approach was not, at first, seemingly rapid; nor was its appearance of very unusual character. It was of a dull red, and had little perceptible train.”

   “It sometimes happens that the train is directed towards the sun, or makes a certain angle with the line joining the head and the sun; it was then called by the ancient astronomers the beard of the comet.”

   “...the comet expands, its vapours are developed and escape in jets towards the radiant star; then we see them driven back on each side of the head and the caudal train commencing.”

7. (archaic)Elongated or trailing portion.
8. (obsolete)Elongated or trailing portion.
9. (obsolete)Elongated or trailing portion.
10. Connected sequence of people or things.

    “Sir, I invite your Highness and your train / To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest /For this one night”

    “The imperial train arrived on November 22 at Te-chou, a city in western Shantung along the border of Chihli.”

    “Grace was glad the citizenry did not know Katherine Gordon was in the king’s train, but she was beginning to understand Henry’s motive for including the pretender’s wife.”

11. Connected sequence of people or things.

    “Our party formed a train at the funeral parlor before departing for the burial.”

12. (figuratively, poetic)Connected sequence of people or things.

    “Theſe are the cruel pirates of Argier, That damned train, the ſcum of Affrica, […]”

13. Connected sequence of people or things.
14. Connected sequence of people or things.

    “A man may be absorbed in the deepest thought, and his brow will remain smooth until he encounters some obstacle in his train of reasoning, or is interrupted by some disturbance, and then a frown passes like a shadow over his brow.”

    “Failure to acknowledge an A.T.C. warning or excessive speed starts the same train of events until correction is made.”

    “"Where was I?" he asked several times during the lunch, losing his train of thought.”

15. Connected sequence of people or things.

    “Thus the development of reason is accompanied by no inner blight or withering. It does not bring in its train loss of faith or weakening of sympathies.”

16. (obsolete)Connected sequence of people or things.

    “in a fair / better / worse train”

    “As we had been in a good train for several days past, I thought it not prudent to break with him, for little matters.”

    “I took care that my absence should neither be lamented by the poor nor the rich. I put every thing in a fair train of going on smoothly, and actually set out, with my steward, for my estate in Wales at dawning of the day.”

    “1787, George Washington, letter to Alexander Hamilton dated 10 July, 1787, in The Writings of George Washington, Boston: American Stationers’ Company, 1837, Volume 9, p. 260, When I refer you to the state of the counsels, which prevailed at the period you left this city, and add that they are now if possible in a worse train than ever, you will find but little ground on which the hope of a good establishment can be formed.”

    “[…] every thing was now in a fairer train for Miss Crawford’s marrying Edmund than it had ever been before.”

17. Connected sequence of people or things.
18. Connected sequence of people or things.
19. Connected sequence of people or things.
20. Connected sequence of people or things.

    “on a train”

    “The train for Edinburgh will leave in 5 minutes.”

    “The train arrived at the station.”

    “We expressed our readiness, and in ten minutes were in the station wagon, rolling rapidly down the long drive, for it was then after nine.[…]As we reached the lodge we heard the whistle, and we backed up against one side of the platform as the train pulled up at the other.”

    “This winter we thought we'd go to Venice by train, for the adventure.”

21. (informal)Connected sequence of people or things.
22. Connected sequence of people or things.
23. Connected sequence of people or things.

    “What steps do development engineers follow when adding new feature code? How do they support different software versions or release trains?”

24. (slang)Connected sequence of people or things.

    ““You want us to run a train on you?””

25. (obsolete, uncountable)Treachery; deceit.

    “In the meane time, through that false Ladies traine / He was surprisd, and buried under beare, / Ne ever to his worke returnd againe [...].”

26. (countable, obsolete)A trick or stratagem.
27. (countable, obsolete)A trap for animals, a snare; (figuratively) a trap in general.
28. (countable, obsolete)A lure; a decoy.
29. (countable, obsolete)A live bird, handicapped or disabled in some way, provided for a young hawk to kill as training or enticement.
30. (countable, obsolete)A clue or trace.
31. (obsolete, uncountable)train oil, whale oil

verb

1. (intransitive)To practice an ability.

   “She trained seven hours a day to prepare for the Olympics.”

2. (transitive)To teach and form (someone) by practice; to educate (someone).

   “You can't train a pig to write poetry.”

   “The dispatches […] also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies. Having lectured the Arab world about democracy for years, its collusion in suppressing freedom was undeniable as protesters were met by weaponry and tear gas made in the west, employed by a military trained by westerners.”

3. (intransitive)To improve one's fitness.

   “I trained with weights all winter.”

4. (intransitive)To proceed in sequence.
5. (transitive)To move (a gun) laterally so that it points in a different direction.

   “The assassin had trained his gun on the minister.”

6. (transitive)To encourage (a plant or branch) to grow in a particular direction or shape, usually by pruning and bending.

   “The vine had been trained over the pergola.”

   “He trains the young branches to the right hand or to the left.”

7. (transitive)To feed data into an algorithm, usually based on a neural network, to create a machine learning model that can perform some task.

   “At least 10 lawsuits have been filed this year against A.I. companies, accusing them of training their systems on artists’ creative work without consent.”

8. (transitive)To transport (something) by train.

   “Colson was to truck the 'plane to Alice Springs, where it would be trained to Adelaide for repairs.”

9. (transitive)To trace (a lode or any mineral appearance) to its head.
10. (transitive)To create a trainer (cheat patch) for; to apply cheats to (a game).

    “I got a twix on the 128 version being fixed and trained by Mad Max at M2K BBS 208-587-7636 in Mountain Home Idaho. He fixes many games and puts them on his board. One of my sources for games and utils.”

    “In the mid-1980s, demoparties were also copyparties, where the first so called hot releases of cracked and trained games changed hands. However, illegal software copying later disappeared […]”

11. (obsolete, transitive)To draw (something) along; to trail, to drag (something).

    “[I]t pleaſed the grekes at that tyme to ſe yͤ body of Hector ſo trayned by Achilles⸝ bycauſe he was wont to be ſo redoubtab[l]e to them⸝ […]”

    “In hollow cube / Training his devilish enginery.”

12. (intransitive, obsolete)To trail down or along the ground.
13. (obsolete, transitive)To draw by persuasion, artifice, or the like; to attract by stratagem; to entice; to allure.

    “If but a dozen French / Were there in arms, they would be as a call / To train ten thousand English to their side.”

    “O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note.”

    “O doe not goe, this feaſt (I'le gage my life) / Is but a plot to trayne you to your ruine, / Be rul'd, you ſha'not goe.”

    “Thou hast been trained from thy post by some deep guile — some well-devised stratagem – the cry of some distressed maiden has caught thine ear, or the laughful look of some merry one has taken thine eye.”

14. (colloquial, obsolete)To be on intimate terms with.

name

1. A surname.