switch engine

1. 1.

   a locomotive for switching rolling stock in a railroad yard

   Synonymsdonkey engine

   Broaderlocomotive

Questions about switch engine

What does switch engine mean?

switch engine means "a locomotive for switching rolling stock in a railroad yard".

What is another word for switch engine?

Close synonyms include donkey engine. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is switch engine a common word?

switch engine is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.