railing en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- /ˈɹeɪlɪŋ/
- (US) audio
Etymology
By surface analysis, rail + -ing.
Meanings
-
That rails; engaged in or given to violent complaining.
The daring of the railing reviler should be checked with moderation, i.e. as a duty of charity, and not through lust for one's own honour.
1918, Saint Thomas (Aquinas), The "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas, page 288:On Anger's self-awareness of the originality of writing as a railing woman, see McManus, "Eve's Dowry," p. 198.
2016, Maria Teresa Micaela Prendergast, Railing, Reviling, and Invective in English Literary Culture, 1588-1617:A clamorous, debating, railing woman feels the need to have the last word.
2013, Paige Coleman, Delivering Women from the Snares of Death, page 52:Why does that railing man go with us?
1647, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher·, The CoxComb:
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Filled with invective and violent complaints
Petrus de Pilichdorf (in the year 1395, as he himself gives the date, cap 30,) writes a book of confutation of the several pretended errors of the Waldenses of this time in thirty-six chapters, but has nothing of baptism; though he descends to speak of many lesser matters, and aggravates all with very railing words, yet he finds nothing to accuse them of, but such things as the protestants now hold, except one or two, as the 'unlawfulness of 'all oaths,' &c.
1844, William Wall, The history of infant-baptism, page 267:I return to earlier considerations of railing by looking at the ways in which the railing style of the Poets' War yields a significant, perverse, even queer fin de siècle aesthetics that is expressed in part by extreme articulations of masculinity: metaphors and puns represent men as either hyperagressive or effeminate.
2016, Maria Teresa Micaela Prendergast, Railing, Reviling, and Invective in English Literary Culture, 1588-1617, page 104:Such was the case of the 'very railing speeches against the justices' by Thomas Holman, vintner, of Terling, Essex, when he was presented in 1608 'for a common drunkard and for keeping ill rule in his house'.
2010, David Cressy, Dangerous Talk, page 27:
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Blowing violently.
Beginning way back in October, one railing storm after another had swept down off the Bitterroot Mountains and into the valley where the Rocking R had stood for three generations.
2015, Rosanne Croft, Linda Reinhardt, Sharon Bernash Smith, Once Upon a Christmas:But scatter to the railing wind Each gloomy phantom of the mind!
1820, Anacreon, Odes of Anacreon - Volume 2, page 45:Had I a garden, claustral yews Should shut out railing wind,
1906, Alfred Austin, The Garden that I Love, page 113:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| more railing | Degree=Cmp | lexicographic | |
| most railing | Degree=Sup | lexicographic |