Word of the Day: Train

train  /  trān noun  

1. a group of connected railroad cars pulled by a locomotive

If your train‘s on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station. Bernard Malamud, 1914- 1986  

2. a long line of moving objects

Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn. John Milton, 1608 – 1674  

3. the part of a gown that trails behind

“Hmph,” she said. “I’d like to see you learn how to manage sitting and standing up straight in stays and petticoats and a dress with a foot’s worth of train!” from “Clockwork Prince” by Cassandra Clare, 1973 –  

4. the staff and equipment providing supplies and staffing for a combat unit

In contrast to almost every major army in history, the Mongols traveled lightly, without a supply train. From “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World” by Jack Weatherford  

5. a retinue; a group of followers or attendants

Lo! He comes with clouds descending, Once for favoured sinners slain; Thousand thousand Saints attending Swell the triumph of His train. Charles Wesley, 1707 – 1788  

6. an orderly sequence or series

A creative train of thought is set off by: the unexpected, the unknown, the accidental, the disorderly, the absurd, the impossible. Asger Jorn, 1914 – 1973  

7. linked mechanical components

Mankind is now caught up, as though in a train of gears, at the heart of a continually accelerating vortex of self-totalisation. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1881 – 1955  

8. a line of gunpower acting as a fuse for an explosion

French John (a faithful servant), with his usual activity and resolution, offers to spike the cannon at the gate, and lay a train of powder, which would blow up the British, should they enter the house. From a letter by First Lady Dolley Madison, 1768 – 1849,  to her sister, Anna, written the day before Washington, D.C. was burned by British forces during the War of 1812   verb  

1. to teach

To train and educate the rising generation will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will be subordinate.  Robert Owen, 1771 – 1858  

2. to prepare physically

If you train hard, you’ll not only be hard, you’ll be hard to beat. Herschel Walker, 1962 –  

3. to guide to achieve a desired outcome or goal

It [the habit of saving] fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind. Thornton T. Munger, 1883 – 1975  

4. to cause something such as a plant or hair to take a desired shape

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all. John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807 – 1892  

5. to aim at or focus on an object

When Galileo first trained his optic telescope on the heavens and opened up modern optical astronomy, that was the first of the electromagnetic windows out of the universe: light. Kip Thorne, 1940 –  

6. to drag something behind

With his scarf training behind him, Casey walked through this wall casually. From “Harry Potter AU / Platform 9 ¾” August 31, 2015, http://www.thehobbitroleplay.com/index.php?action=profile;area=showposts;sa=topics;u=401  

7. to travel by railroad car

After returning the rental car in Zagreb, we trained to Vienna and flew home.  https://photos.trips45.com/Balkans2014/album/index.html