underground railroad

1. 1.

   secret aid to escaping slaves that was provided by abolitionists in the years before the American Civil War

   SynonymsUnderground Railway

   Broaderescape

Questions about underground railroad

What does underground railroad mean?

underground railroad means "secret aid to escaping slaves that was provided by abolitionists in the years before the American Civil War".

What is another word for underground railroad?

Close synonyms include Underground Railway. 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 underground railroad a common word?

underground railroad 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.